By James McNair
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Pam Bausmith, owner of Primitives & More in Waynesville. (Michael Snyder photo) | ZOOM |

WAYNESVILLE - If it weren't so tastefully arranged, Pam Bausmith's store would be the ultimate collection of household junk.

Housed in a small church built in 1877, Primitives & More is a labyrinth of rustic furniture, barn goods, store fixtures and domestic items so old and beaten up that curbside, not inside, would appear to be the proper placement. With so much cracked, peeling paint and rusty metal in view, customers might be forewarned to get a tetanus shot.

Yet if homeliness can make the leap to home-worthiness, Bausmith is showing the way.

People spend hundreds of dollars on the most forsaken-looking cupboards and cabinets. Bausmith ships items all over the country. In January, she launched a Web site, www.primitives-more.com.

Don't bother trying to elicit Bausmith's source of inspiration or the design movement she draws from. Four years ago, Bausmith gave up a career filling teeth and assisting with surgery in a Lebanon dental office and turned her hobby of collecting antiques and "primitives" into a business.

Pressed to describe the motif of her store, she arrives at "the look."

"I want it to look old," she said. "If it doesn't, we'll grunge it down to make it look old. That's basically my MO."

Four or five times a year, Bausmith and her husband, Bill, troll the East Coast in their Chevrolet pickup and a 16-foot-long trailer in search of inventory.

With a store to run, though, she relies heavily on "pickers" to spot and buy items that meet the criteria of her distressed style.

"I have one picker who buys the contents of every barn," Bausmith said. "If she goes to a farm auction, she'll try to buy the entire contents of it. I buy the farm wagons, feed bins and troughs from her."

One recently sold item might serve to affirm Bausmith's market niche. The large, wooden dry sink, found in Minster, Ohio, is flecked here and there with dark red paint exposed by the fraying of a subsequent coat of brown. It was on display for four weeks before a customer bought it - for $1,495.

Next to the dry sink, an upright three-door cabinet - Pollocked in fading gray over an earlier coat of blackish green - is available for $899. A white-over-green - or is it green-over-white? - pine cupboard is priced at $595.

"They've got to be in good condition for me to sell them," Bausmith explained. "The grungier it is, the better I like it; because if it's not that distressed, I have a hard time placing it in the shop. I don't like things perfect."

Complementing her battered inventory are a wide variety of new items with a primitive look - twig wreaths, hooked rugs, clay pumpkins, grapevine "trees," birdhouses and new furniture that combines old door panels or window shutters with fresh, faux-distressed boards. All are made by local artists and artisans, Bausmith said.

"I had a chance to sell fine antiques and solid cherry furniture, but that's just not my style," she said.

In a town teeming with antiques stores, Primitives & More uses product selection and interior design to differentiate itself along the lines of the Retailing 101 postulate. The strategy must be working; Bausmith is talking about expanding.

"The core focus of a differentiation strategy is to try to be unique in some way that brings value to the customer," said Charles Matthews, a University of Cincinnati management professor and head of its Small Business Institute. "If you don't have a low-cost structure, it's important to have a differentiation strategy."

What's also important, he added, is to be somewhat impervious to duplication.

"What you want to do is make it hard or expensive to duplicate what you do," Matthews said.

Few, if any, other antiques stores offer the authentic rustic grunge of Primitives & More.

Bausmith might struggle to come up with a name for her style, but the market for it appears to be robust.

One customer, Ann Rebhan of Savannah, Ga., bought a 4-foot-wide wood sign that read "Greenhouse" for $48.95.

She said the Deep South doesn't have primitives like the Midwest does.

"When people come in and say they want an entire display or everything on a table for their house, I know I must be doing something right," Bausmith said.

E-mail jmcnair@enquirer.com