Village Squire, 1978-08, Page 19BUSINESS
Putting people
on the road
brought
Ted Schinbein
home
What do you do when you're a musician
who wants to settle down and raise a family
in your old home town? Well for Ted
Schinbein the current craze for vans proved
the answer and Vanscaping was born.
Ted. a native of Mitchell was the kind of
person for whom vans were made when he
was travelling the country as a musician
working out of Winnipeg a few years ago.
He left his music behind for a while and he
went north to the Arctic and helped start an
Eskimo Co-operative but he came back to it
again when he returned south. He was
home in Mitchell visiting when he helped a
friend do over the interior of a van and
thinking it was time to settle down. The
idea of opening a van business was
mentioned. Later, on a trip down the east
coast of the U.S. playing at various folk
music clubs the idea was still there.
Travelling down one of the beautfully
landscaped super highways in the U.S. the
comparison of landscaping to vanscaping
was brought up and the potential business
had a name.
Back in Mitchell, Ted saw an old garage
sitting empty at the north end of town and
rented it in October 1974. Two weeks were
spent cleaning the place up and then
Vanscaping opened up.
The van boom was still young in those
days. particularly in small town Ontario but
on his first day open someone approached
him about doing a van interior. He figured
the cost out at $425 but by the time he
delivered the finished product he realized
his error and had to increase the cost to
$700, even then taking a loss. The job was
really in the neighbourhood of a
$1200-$1400 project he says now with a
laugh.
Work on the interior walls of a van at Vanscaping. The van boom shows no sign of
slackening.
VILLAGE SQUIRE/AUGUST 1978. PG. 17.