For the ‘Love’ of kids, football and giving back
Where swings get sharper and arms get stronger
July 13, 2026
NEENAH – Store Manager Sam Frosch said after roughly six months of preparation, he and his team excitedly welcomed customers to the new Theisen’s Home•Farm•Auto of Neenah at 999 Winneconne Ave. last month.
“I started in early January and got the opportunity to work at quite a few different Theisen’s stores throughout the company – just learning their processes and procedures,” he said. “It was, I’d say, early March when we started hiring people at the physical store and getting the store all set up.”
Initially featured by The Business News in its Feb. 9, 2026 issue, Chief Marketing and Merchandising Officer Steve Jensen said the Iowa-based retailer had been actively searching for a new store location when the former Kruger’s TrueValue building became available.
Since its initial weekend open, Frosch said customer response has “been very good.”
“We opened the garden center first [for] maybe three or four weeks before we opened the main store,” he said. “So, we started engaging with the customers at that time, and there’s a lot of excitement, because the building sat empty [for a long time].”
Customers’ excitement, Frosch said, has given him and his staff “a good picture” of Kruger’s former standing as a “fixture in the community.”
“A lot of customers are very excited just to have something here – not a vacant building,” he said, “Something that [is] a similar business that [can] sort of fill that void they have.”
Despite the store offering a wide range of products – from sporting goods, work apparel, footwear, paint and hardware – Frosch said Theisen’s specialty is animal care.
“Our favorite customers, we like to say, have four legs,” he laughed.
‘A community store’
Frosch – a tenured retail professional who has lived in Neenah for the last three years – said a former coworker of his working at Theisen’s reached out about the new location and a potential job opportunity.
“I [worked] with another retailer for 24 years,” he said. “I looked into [Theisen’s], and it was very intriguing, because it [is] still family-owned – fourth-generation family-owned – and that was something that appealed to me.”
Through the efforts of himself and his team of 50 employees – “all local to the area” – Frosch said they prepared the new Thesien’s store for service from March until its grand opening in June.
“The building is just more than 50,000 square feet,” he said. “In Theisen’s world, there are A, B, C and D stores – A being the biggest. So, we’re sort of right in the middle.”
Arranging and stocking a store of that size, Frosch said, is “really hard work” – giving the employees an early opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to Theisen’s.
“Setting up stores is really hard work, and it’s a lot different than [the work] we hired them to do,” he said. “Usually, you have quite a bit of turnover during that process, but we had, I’d say, almost none. So, I think the people we hired could see the big picture – they really wanted to work here long term, and they were willing to put in the hard work to get there. That really impressed me.”
A lot of the employees, Frosch said, live “right in the neighborhood” Theisen’s Neenah location serves.
“[They] are part of the community, and that’s really what we want to be, is a community store,” he said. “We’ll continue Theisen’s tradition of supporting local charities and local causes, and hopefully be [a] community hub for that.”
For more on Theisen’s of Neenah, find it on Facebook.
