There is no tidy retail category for Rusty Raven, 500 1st St., in downtown New Glarus. That is largely the point. Step inside and the mix can range from vintage and antique pieces to gifts, locally made products, offbeat décor and things that seem chosen primarily because they are unlike what shoppers expect to find anywhere else.

Owner Jon Hovland has a description, although even his is intentionally loose: “It’s the most relaxed eclectic trading post that you will ever walk into.” The store’s identity is built less around a particular category of merchandise than around surprise, discovery and the idea that a shopper should be able to walk in repeatedly and notice something different each time.

That approach comes from a retailer who spent about 30 years in corporate retail, much of it with Target and Sam’s Club, before eventually landing in the New Glarus area. Hovland grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, attended college in La Crosse and spent much of his adult life moving between Minnesota and Wisconsin. After moving to the area about nine years ago, he took a job managing Kinderladen, where he spent three years learning not only the mechanics of a downtown shop but also the rhythms of tourism in New Glarus.

Hovland credits that experience with giving him an education in how the village works as a shopping destination. When the opportunity came to take over Rusty Raven, a business founded in 2017, he saw potential in an idea that already had an unusual hook: combining retail with a place where customers could have a beer while they shopped. He and his partners have now been operating Rusty Raven for about five and a half years, reshaping the merchandise mix around a broader range of affordable, unusual finds.