From Bar to Empire, Eskimo Joe’s Still Hot After 21 Years

Eskimo Joe has come of age. The big-grinning mascot who debuted 21 years ago along with his namesake, Stillwater’s famed hangout, is now more than just another logo. He has his own empire.

“Vote Joe for President” buttons are making the rounds. Eskimo Joe’s also has new prepaid telephone cards through MCI. Stillwater National Bank counts 1,168 Visas and MasterCards imprinted with the notoriously happy cartoon face.

From catalog sales to T-shirts worn around the world, Eskimo Joe’s has matured into a million-dollar business from the two-employee beer joint that opened July 21, 1975.

“Coming of age. No question,” said owner Stan Clark.

Clark had just graduated from Oklahoma State University when he and partner Steve File signed a lease on a former diner near campus. They spent $15,000--including $1,700 for a cooler--to open a bar they named Eskimo Joe’s. An OSU freshman sketched a logo: Joe, toothy and wearing a parka hood, next to Buffy, a sidekick dog.

“It was a shoestring deal,” Clark said. “It was severely undercapitalized. But that forces you to be creative and use your heart.”

Clark bought out File in 1978 and now runs a clothing company and two restaurants inspired by Eskimo Joe’s. Stan Clark Cos. employs more than 500 people, he said.

*

Jim Mason, Stillwater Chamber of Commerce chief executive officer, said that Eskimo Joe’s draws about 32 tour buses a year. Its T-shirts, Mason said, are the second-most popular in the United States, behind Hard Rock Cafe shirts.

He credits the popularity to an air of friendly camaraderie.

“It’s a symbol of what the good times in college were about, the social atmosphere, the getting together with buds,” Mason said.

Eskimo Joe’s evolved from bar to restaurant in 1983, when the Legislature raised the drinking age to 21. Clark expanded the menu to broaden his clientele beyond OSU undergraduates.

Now the two-story stone structure, renovated over the years to include an atrium and the bright Joe Dome, attracts families and children too.

As he worked his way through a recent lunch crowd, Clark greeted employees and customers by name. Students shot pool amid the noisy chaos of rhythm-and-blues music, neon lights and antique signs hung on the wooden walls.

“Look at all these people,” Clark confided in a hoarse whisper that muted his high energy level. “I love it!”

*

Clark, 43, opened Stillwater Bay Oyster Co. in 1984 and Mexico Joe’s in 1987. He said the biggest blunder of his career was opening the Mexican restaurant prematurely and then running so short of cash that he had to take out advances on his credit card just to meet payroll.

Meanwhile, the T-shirt business took off.

Clark said the first 72 Joe’s shirts printed went for $3.75 apiece--and a beer came with each purchase. They sold out the first week. Restocking the supply was sporadic.

“A more astute businessman would have realized the potential. Not dummy me,” Clark said.

The haphazard management of T-shirts eventually grew more sophisticated. The anniversary party that Eskimo Joe’s used to throw each July gave an occasion for a new commemorative design.

T-shirts became so big that Clark printed catalogs and opened stores in Stillwater, Tulsa and Oklahoma City. He declined to reveal sales figures for the tank tops, shorts, shirts and other merchandise produced by Joe’s Clothes.

File said he never dreamed of such scope and duration for the bar he helped start.

“It’s beyond anybody’s expectations. It’s just a big, big, big business, is what it boils down to,” he said. “Obviously, I wouldn’t have sold out had I had any idea it would be as big as it became.”

File, who now owns the Igloo Grill in Edmond, calls Clark a consummate salesman and gregarious personality. Selling fun is hard work, he said.

Observers say Eskimo Joe’s bloomed into an Oklahoma icon through word-of-mouth promotion by loyal patrons and some aggressive marketing moves:

* All babies born at Stillwater Medical Center are given tiny Joe’s T-shirts.

* Through mail order, customers can buy everything from $1 decals to $195 golf bags. A compact disc called “Eskimo Joe’s Rhythm & Blues Revue” was released last year, with Clark singing lead vocals.

* During now-discontinued Joe’s anniversary weekends, as many as 65,000 people would show up. But since 1994, festivities have been spread throughout July.

Art director Mike Staubus has designed the anniversary T-shirts for the past 13 years. This year’s theme? “Ain’t never had too much fun!”

The shirt shows Joe and Buffy at play and spilling a drink.

“OK, Joe’s 21, but he’s not so grown up,” Staubus said. “He’s still a kid.”

Clark’s philosophy--get better, not bigger--will probably keep Eskimo Joe’s from opening a restaurant outside its home base. The problem, Clark said, would be trying to duplicate the mystique.

“We are successful enough right now [that] we could have been a national chain by now. That’s not what we want,” Clark said. “ . . . It’s just so special to me. I don’t know if I could go out and re-create it.”