Limestone Ledger

BLOOMINGTON, IN – A favorite local business celebrated a ‘Grand Reopening’ and unveiled a branding refresh that embraces its past connection to Paganism in Germany.

Kleindorfer’s Hardware and Variety Store has been a Bloomington institution since 1964, though the namesake family has a long history of entrepreneurship dating back hundreds of years.

Dietrich Kleindorfer, the original owner who passed in 2022, descended from a long line of German business owners and pagan practitioners. The earliest Kleindorfer business can be traced back to the Middle Ages when Wilhelm Kleindorfer owned a successful Animal Husbandry enterprise in Northeastern Germany in what is now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

“Kleindorfer has been a surname synonymous with success since the 16th Century,” noted area historian Nancy Trap. “Most credit the family’s enduring prosperity to their devotion to pagan worship and rituals.”

The Kleindorfer pagan fidelity is what inspired the company to update its branding and image to reflect the family’s centuries old affinity for the naturalistic and spiritual elements of Germanic Paganism.

“Once my father passed, we decided it was time for the store to really embody the foundational principles of early and ongoing Kleindorfer reverence for pagan values that are intrinsic to our success,” said Otto Kleindorfer, son of Dietrich and current store owner. “We hope that the new look and feel, including Goatman and pentacle logos, tell the true origin story of not only our store, but of all Kleindorfer successes largely due to our pagan past.”

At the ‘Grand Reopening’ customers were largely caught off guard by the goat-human, standing 12-feet tall, and confused by the aisles only being numbered 3, 7, and 9.