Garment rentals handled with care at Tip Top Tux

Since the 2008 purchase of the towering brick building at 500 Floyd Blvd, formerly Randall’s Formal Wear, Ladsten has been constantly working to hone his business' image.

Early in his career, Ladsten, who lives in Green Bay, Wis., worked as a sales representative and would regularly visit Randall’s, taking note of the rustic building.

“I always admired this building and thought it really had a lot of potential,” he said. “I kind of like historical things and getting them back to their original grandeur over time. “

Originally built in 1905 and serving as Sioux City’s train depot, Ladsten has worked to keep a modicum of the building’s history intact while still renovating a space that had hardly been touched since the 1980s.

“Downstairs in the original store front there was no natural light, everything was blocked off and it looked like an 1980s movie theater,” he said.

Natural lighting fills Ladsten’s office, windows open to a view northwest and Sioux City’s skyline. With the words “Train Master” still on his office door, laughing, he said employees around the building sometimes refer to him as the “conductor.”

Ladsten has put forth a conscious effort into the building’s ongoing renovation, designing the main floor’s showroom to have a night club warehouse feel while keeping the train depot image in the offices upstairs.

“We changed all the lighting to more period of the time and restored the tin ceilings with copper paint and warmed it up,” Ladsten said. “We did add some offices that we had constructed, but I had them constructed in the exact same pattern as the building so you can’t tell they weren’t there in the original train depot setting.”

In 2008 there were six Tip Top Tux stores. Now there are 22 locations stretching as far north as Grand Forks, N.D., and as far south as Kansas City.

“We pretty much follow I-29 all the way down,” Ladsten said with a smile.

Sioux City’s Floyd Boulevard location serves as the center point for the eight-state region, with 150 agent stores.

“That’s pretty much my vision, was to have this be the center hub,” Ladsten said. “We have 60,000 square feet here and we supply the whole eight-state region. There are probably 200 doors between our stores and the agents where you could rent a Tip Top Tux tuxedo.”

The tuxedo rental industry is a largely seasonal business, and Tip Top Tux’s busiest week is on the horizon. The week of April 27, Ladsten said, will be the busiest week of the year, with an estimated 9,000 tuxedos rentals for proms and other events.

“We go from a high of just over 200 employees during peak time to right now we’re running about 130. So we’ll be adding 70 positions coming up here,” he said.

Ladsten’s approach is to treat not only the customers but also the employees with care. Even though the 70 open positions are temporary, he said many of them will be filled by returning employees.

“Most of them return,” he said. “Our average plant tenure is 14 years, which is amazing for plant production.”

While the most recent round of renovations was completed in last spring, Ladsten said the work is ongoing. With a century-old building there are always projects.

In the near future Ladsten plans to add more restroom facilities to the building, including showers to complement an employee gym on the second floor.

In addition the Tip Top Tux location on Sioux City’s west side moved, giving employees and customers there entirely new facilities.

“In July we finished a brand new renovation of Lakeport Commons, so we moved over one space,” he said. “and that one’s looking really killer.”

Additional stores are planned to open as well, Ladsten said, a Council Bluffs, Iowa, location and three more in Kansas City.

“We’ve been building the brand very well,” he said. “We’ve been getting noticed and known more so and more so. When I first came here it was always, 'Oh yeah, you’re in that Randall’s building, right?' ‘cause for the first 60 years it had been a fixture. And now I’m starting to hear our own name a little bit more.”