Norm’s Bargain Barn first appeared in February of 1997 and served as an outlet for returned, discontinued, damaged and overstocked items from its parent company, Wilke Window & Door Inc... Norm Wilke had founded Wilke Window & Door back in 1960 and after more than 30 years he decided to semi-retire and turn over control to his son, Steve Wilke in 1991. Retirement allowed Norm to concentrate on his other interests. Being raised on a farm, Norm loved restoring vintage farm equipment to its original condition. He also loved draft horses and when a team of Clydesdales became available Norm was quick to snatch them up.

But Norm always found himself being drawn back to his main interest, Wilke Window & Door, which by now had grown into one of the St. Louis areas’ largest building supply companies. Soon Norm began taking on more and more responsibilities, one of which included Wilke’s annual tent sale where the company would try to sell, over a three day period, all the non-stock items that had accumulated over the year.

In 1995, Wilke Window & Door completed construction of its new 90,000 sq ft warehouse and converted a portion of the old warehouse into an area for Norm to sell tent sale items year round. Norm combined his new responsibility with his passion for farm living and created Norm’s Bargain Barn. After remodeling the warehouse to look like an old red barn, Norm soon discovered that if he wanted people to keep coming back he would need more to sell than the company’s mistakes. Norm began calling all the suppliers that he had dealt with for years looking for closeouts, overruns and obsolete inventory to sell in his new facility. It didn’t take long for manufacturers to discover that Norm’s Bargain Barn was an excellent place to liquidate their unwanted inventory. Norm added a stock line of economical new construction vinyl windows, kitchen and bath cabinets and decorative glass entry doors to round out his product offerings. It became increasingly obvious that Norm was going to need a lot more room, so plans were made to build a new larger barn to house all of the products Norm wanted to offer. After years of planning, Norm finally opened his new Bargain Barn in January of 2005 complete with horse stables to house his 2000 pound pet Clydesdales.