South Dakota Retailers Association

About Us

At the South Dakota Retailers Association, our purpose is to advocate, inform and provide services for our member businesses. We represent nearly 4,000 members in more than 160 business categories and are one of the country's oldest and largest retail trade associations.

It all started with a few letters.

In the summer of 1896, a number of South Dakota business owners began corresponding with each other. They wrote letters to each other, as well as to editorial columns in newspapers. They felt, as one wrote, that there was ''a profound and just discontent with existing conditions, coupled with the desire to change and better the same.''

As a result of those letters, when the spring of 1897 rolled around, an Alpena business owner decided it was time for the retail business people of South Dakota to begin doing some serious thinking about establishing a permanent organization to represent their interests.

C.C. Issenhuth called together a handful of his colleagues from across the northeastern part of the state to take the preliminary steps toward forming an association. Those nine men met at the Spink County Courthouse in Redfield on May 18, 1897. That was the beginning. Within a few months, the South Dakota Retail Merchants Association was off and running.

Today, The South Dakota Retailers Association represents over 4,000 members in more than 160 business categories and is one of the country’s oldest and largest retail trade associations.