A niche for success.

• Author: Ajango, Deb
• Position: Home center store Allen and Petersen in Anchorage, Alaska

Thriving through Alaska's booms and busts is not a matter of luck. Survival for Allen and Petersen, an Anchorage home-decorating store for 30 years, depends upon great products, good business sense - and a stick-to-it attitude.

While many businesses around the state have come and gone with the building seasons, one Alaska-owned business has survived economic booms and busts to become a small part of state history. And that business, Allen and Petersen, based in Anchorage, is now looking forward to a new generation of success.

Allen and Petersen's annals in Alaska began nearly 30 years ago. Jack Petersen came to Alaska in 1965 as an employee of Fuller Paint & Glass to do earthquake reconstruction work specializing in glass and aluminum products. While at Fuller, Petersen made many contacts with talented and ambitious co-workers. One of those contacts was Ray Allen, who specialized in floors and ceilings.

Eventually, Fuller Paint & Glass closed its contract unit in Anchorage, and many of the company's workers moved on to start businesses of their own. As Petersen recalls of his former employer, "Fuller was the big boy. They weren't big as we know big today, but they were the king pin then."

Over the years, from the original Fuller team "about 10 major Alaska-owned businesses were started," Petersen estimates.

Year-Round Yearnings

In 1967, Allen and Petersen left Fuller to start Commercial Contractors Inc., offering floor, acoustical ceiling and glass contracting. The partners soon realized that commercial work could only keep them busy from October through April. During the summer, Petersen jokes, "We'd starve to death."

Paint was a natural for summer-oriented business, so in 1969 the company rented space next to Noblecraft Kitchens Co. (down the street from Allen and Petersen's current Benson and Seward Highway location in Anchorage) and started doing retail business in the same lines as its commercial work, along with paint and wallpaper. The new firm was called Allen & Petersen Co.

The versatility did the trick, and the company stayed busy year-round. During the 1970s, Allen and Petersen rode the waves of change and continued to keep up with Alaska's booming economy. The two men purchased their neighbor, Noblecraft Kitchens. They also purchased the "Charcoal Burger" building and an adjoining Quonset hut, which was remodeled into a paint store.

In 1978, work was started on their current building in Anchorage. Petersen says that he and Allen...