A small, family-owned business that has maintained a Main Street niche for itself during most of the last century will receive statewide honors in Augusta next week.

Rosen’s Department Store in Bucksport will receive the Maine Merchants Association’s 2002 Retailer of the Year award during the group’s annual meeting on Oct. 4. The third-generation owner of the business, Richard Rosen, a two-term state representative, also will be honored with the association’s Government Services Award.

“A family-owned and- operated store since 1910, Rosen’s has been a mainstay in the Maine retail community and has grown to epitomize the remaining ‘Main Street’ merchants that continue to be the backbone of the industry,” said the association’s president, Roger Pomerleau, in announcing the award winner.

Rosen was surprised when he learned of the awards but thrilled that a small store such as his had been selected.

“I think this shows an appreciation for all the small businesses that we talk about all the time,” Rosen said. “I think we’re typical of the type of business you can find in every town in one form or another.”

The store was founded in 1910 in Woodland by Rosen’s grandparents Robert and Sarah Rosen, who had immigrated to the United States from Russia. The couple moved the business to Bucksport’s Main Street in 1929, attracted by the start of construction on the Seaboard Paper Co. mill and the Waldo-Hancock bridge.

Robert Rosen died around 1940 and Lawrence, Rosen’s father, took over the business.

“Dad was the only child unmarried at the time, so it fell to him to take care of things,” Rosen said.

World War II intervened, and Lawrence enlisted in the Army Air Corps while Sarah and a Rosen sister, Ida, ran the store. After the war, Lawrence returned to Bucksport and married a local girl, Lillian Mead, who joined him at the store.

“They worked every day together for 48 years,” Rosen said of his parents.

Richard Rosen is one of three sons, all of whom worked in the store.

“The family store is like the family farm,” he said. “All of us worked in the store. It was what you did.”

His brothers moved on to other careers, but Rosen remained with the store, and in 1985 bought the business from his parents, both of whom stayed active in the store’s operation until they died – his father in 1992 and mother in 1996.

Rosen said he was fortunate to have had the opportunity to work regularly with both of his parents in the business.

“I had a chance to work daily with them and to get to know them adult-to-adult,” he said. “Working as partners was a wonderful benefit. I was able to discover who they were as people.”

Rosen’s wife and children also have been involved in the business, although he admits that his children, Rachel, 19, and David, 16, have had more freedom to try other opportunities. Rosen’s wife, Kim, a beautician, helps with the buying, and his brother Phil works on the business’s books, as he has done for years.

Over the years, the store’s success has been based on the flexibility of a small store to adapt to changing customer demands. People who shop at the store like having their selections in a smaller physical area and appreciate the relationship that can develop in a small store, Rosen said.

“I always enjoyed the business and the relationship with the customers,” he said. “It was like an extended family. A lot of families trade here and have done so over the years. It seemed like a natural fit.”

That relationship is critical for the success of the store, he said, and it’s made possible by the staff of eight that works there, some of whom have been with Rosen’s for two or three decades.

“They’re the people who look out for the customers,” he said. “They see to it that the store takes care of the customers. They search for the items or brands that customers are looking for and they also advocate when to drop something.”

That’s the advantage of a small, local store over a national chain, he said.

“The small store has the flexibility to focus on particular demands and to try to satisfy them better, perhaps, than what a chain can do,” he said.

The business has, by choice, remained small and built a reputation for carrying branded, good-quality items. Though he wouldn’t reveal annual sales figures, Rosen said the staff handles about 36,000 customer transactions a year, broken down into three main categories: 50 percent women’s clothing, 30 percent men’s clothing, and 20 percent footwear.

Arranged throughout the 4,000 square feet of sales space in the store are such well-known brands as Woolrich, Pendleton and Wolverine, as well as a small selection of hometown merchandise. Locally designed caps and T-shirts promote the store and the town with images of prominent Bucksport buildings and other local features, and with the town’s new slogan, “Rich in heritage, looking to the future.”

As Rosen’s has adapted to changes in taste and style over the years, it also has adapted to the changing community. The decline of downtowns all over the country in the 1960s and ’70s, fueled in part by the appearance of malls, left Bucksport with just a few businesses, including Rosen’s, on Main Street. It was a tough time, Rosen recalled.

“There was much debate about what to do and what our role should be,” he said. “We talked about whether we should move.”

The family decided to remain a “small, family-run, Main Street business.” Ultimately, he said, that decision was made by the townspeople in Bucksport.

“The town was at a point where it had to decide whether it was content to become a small, comfortable bedroom community and essentially lose its local commercial base, or whether it would reclaim its downtown and its local identity and rebuild,” he said. “The community chose to rebuild. Now, there’s activity on the riverfront, the storefronts are reoccupied. The will of the community had a lot to do with that.”

With a thriving Main Street, the future looks bright for Rosen’s and for the businesses around the store. The resurgence of the downtown area, including an increase in the number of people living downtown, has brought with it an increase in pedestrian traffic and an influx of new customers.

The future, however, will not be without its challenges. The health of the vendors that supply his store is a major concern, as is the trend of national chains to locate their stores in smaller communities. Changes in the local scene, including new commercial development along Route 1, also will offer challenges to Main Street stores.

Ultimately, Rosen said, small stores will have to continue to adapt to fit a changing environment and will have to respond in a way that satisfies what the customer is demanding. He is confident that Rosen’s Department Store will be able to do that.

“I’m very excited. I think there’s going to be a resurgence of stores like this.”