After 19 years working at Farm Services Agency in Montgomery City, Sara Lionberger needed a change.

So the longtime Middletown resident teamed up with her husband, Marty, to become owners of S & R Sporting Goods, a small store located on 7 South Cherry Street in Middletown, on Oct. 1, 2021.

“We saw this opportunity,” Lionberger said. “I’m a professional photographer as well, so I had that in my back pocket. I do this, do photography and I’m a farmer.”

On Dec. 2, the store celebrated its 1-year anniversary by having a customer appreciation day. It also held an open house raffle, where patrons got a chance to win a full zip jacket and an S & R Sporting Goods hoodie.

“We did good,” Lionberger said. “Right now, we’re starting to get into our busy season, which is hunting season. Deer season is over. We predominantly serve here locally within the three to four hour range of travel time that people, such as coyote and coon hunters, come to us. Coyote hunters are probably our biggest customer base.”

The Lionbergers bought the store from Howard and Ann Owen, who owned the business for 13 years. Their daughter, Jordan, who graduated from Wellsville-Middletown High School in 2021, is the store manager. The store also has a full-time employee, Justin Lewis.

“I know when Howard and Ann owned it, I think there were months which they had $60,000-$70,000 months and that’s awesome,” Lionberger said. “We’ve done really well. We hit some trade shows this year. We had a trailer. We packed up this whole store and we took off. We had $20,000 days and that was great.”

The 16x24 store sells mostly hunting equipment. It is also an authorized Garmin dealer.

Lionberger said she hopes the store will enjoy success during the holiday season. It opens from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday and 9 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday.

“Last year was a different season because we didn’t have products to sell,” Lionberger said. “Everything was stuck on the cargo ship. COVID took over, so not having products to sell made it very interesting. But we’re doing good. We’ve been able to sustain. Now, we’re picking up.”

Lewis said the store has attracted many customers from out of state.

“We do have people from here locally and people who drive three to four hours away to come here,” Lewis said. “We had people drive from as far as Wisconsin to come here because they wanted that product the next day. The only way they could get it that fast was to drive for it themselves. We ship all over the country. We do a lot of shipping to Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana.”

Lionberger said as the year 2023 approaches, the store’s mission is getting more customers.

“I just want our name to get out there more,” Lionberger said. “There are still people walking in and they’ll be like, ‘I didn’t know this store was even here.’” We are making some changes and there are a couple of more things that I want to do. We’re looking into more trade shows to go to this next year, getting our name out there so we can serve more customers. We’re just a tiny little store.”