Best friends and partners in business and life, Bob and Lynne Plourde stand behind the counter of their Newcastle business, Coastal Locker-Room. The couple celebrates 30 years of marriage in June. (Sherwood Olin photo)
Together for 35 years now, Bob and Lynne Plourde talk on the telephone maybe 10 times a day. Each conversation could be a few seconds or many minutes, but no matter how many times they talk or for how long, they still make it a point to say “I love you” before the end of almost every call.
It would be every single call, the Plourdes said between giggles, but sometimes one or the other is a little too stressed or one of them might hang up just a little too fast to get the words out.
“My sister-in-law mentioned it to me the other day,” Lynne Plourde said. “She goes, ‘I like how you always hang up when you are done talking. You always say ‘I love you’ at the end of the phone call. She goes, ‘not a lot of people do that.’”
Together the Plourdes own two businesses: Coastal Locker-Room, at 4 Mills Road in Newcastle, and Mail it 4U, at 10 State Road in Bath. The couple lives in Newcastle, where Lynne Plourde works, and Bob Plourde commutes to Bath during the week.
According to the couple, Coastal Locker-Room grew in response to requests from customers of their shipping business.
“For some reason, shipping and packing and printing paper and doing that stuff turns into ‘Do you do T-shirts? Do you do hats?’” Bob Plourde said. “No but I can, I guess, if I buy the equipment. So the apparel piece kind of grew together with that.”
Today Coastal Locker-Room creates school, team, or commercial apparel and promotional items using processes such as silk screening, embroidery, heat pressing, and sublimation. With current technology, Coastal Locker-Room can create custom apparel and merchandise to order, as needed.
Mail it 4U began when the Plourdes opened Bob’s Mailbox Express on Biscay Road in Damariscotta in 2003.
In 2005 the couple bought and moved the business to Mills Road in Newcastle, adding the Bath location in 2012. In 2022, the couple sold their Newcastle shipping business and devoted themselves full time to Coastal Locker-Room. They still maintain Mail It 4U’s Bath location, where they also offer Coastal Locker-Room apparel and services.
To assist sales, the couple has a trailer outfitted to do custom screen printing. They pick a few select school events to attend each year, such as the annual Westlake Memorial Wrestling Tournament, and produce school-related apparel on demand, on site.
“We don’t like to say no,” Bob Plourde said. “You come in, you request something. We’ll say yes, and then we’ll sit together and go, ‘How are we going do that?’ Now we have got to figure it out. That’s what we do.”
As business owners, the Plourdes have made it a point to give back to the community. A disinterested student in high school himself, Bob Plourde takes pride in hiring high school students and preparing them for the working world.
“I’ve always had a high school kid working for us for many, many years and I encourage them to be active in school,” he said. “I encourage them to do good in school. Don’t be me. Don’t be a Bob.”
Both Bob and Lynne Plourde grew up in Lincoln County. Bob Plourde grew up primarily in Newcastle and Lynne, whose last name at the time was Wright, grew up in Nobleboro. While she had noticed the handsome senior during their time at Lincoln Academy, the couple didn’t start dating until after Bob Plourde graduated in 1989.
At the time Lynne Plourde’s parents owned and operated the Wright Store at the foot of Academy Hill Road in Newcastle. Bob Plourde, employed at Louis Does Home Center in Newcastle, was a regular customer.
“I used to work at the store a lot, and he would come in and get a ham and cheese or a hot roast beef and cheese,” Lynne Plourde said. “I made a good sandwich, I guess, and he asked me out on a date.”
That first date included dinner at a Sizzler in Brunswick where a nervous Lynne ordered the same meal Bob did, a king cut prime rib.
“I didn’t know what to order, because I was nervous,” Lynne said. “And he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m invested now.’ Then when I was cutting it, things are flying off the plate. I was so nervous, it wasn’t even funny.”
One date turned into another and then another. Without really trying the couple was basically inseparable from date one. They married at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Newcastle in June 1995.
By then Bob Plourde was five years into his Walmart tenure. In 1990, Walmart was expanding nationally and was preparing to open a store in Scarborough. Encouraged by a Louis Doe customer, Bob Pourde applied and was hired as a department manager. He would eventually be promoted to store manager and spend the better part of the next 13 years managing Walmarts in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.
“They bounce you around,” he said. “You go in, you fix stuff, and you move on. That was their trend.”
The regular moves were challenging but had the unexpected benefit of bringing the young couple closer together as they relied on each other for support, Bob Plourde said.
“I think it helped us figure each other out, and we ended up becoming best friends as well as husband and wife, because it was just us,” Bob Plourde said. “Our family wasn’t close by. Really we were only a few hours away, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time off … I think it’s part of our success in getting along and being able to work together and in business together, is we kind of started off early in our marriage. In our relationship, that was how we grew together.”
Lynne Plourde later joined Walmart as a floating office administrator and together the couple made a formidable team for the company. Bob Plourde said the Walmart he left in 2003 was not the same company he joined in 1990.
“It’s too bad, the culture that used to be compared to now,” he said. “I couldn’t work for them. That’s why I left. Actually, I had a supervisor come in and told me I didn’t need to think anymore. I just need to take notes and do what I’m told. I said you have got the wrong guy. I’m out of here.”
The couple returned to Lincoln County and opened Bob’s Mailbox Express. They had welcomed their daughter, Bailey, in 1999 and Bob Plourde said he was painfully aware of what he was missing because of his job.
“I said, if I put that many hours into the day, I’m going have my own business,” he said. “The biggest thing is, our daughter was born and I was missing things, you know? The first step I was missing. The first words I was missing. I was missing those things, and I said, ‘No, that’s not the way I’m going to bring her up.’”
These days the couple rarely spends their workdays together but they make a point to enjoy as much time together as possible, whether it’s taking in a high school sporting event or traveling to watch Bailey, three-time state champion and a two-time Maine amateur champion, play competitive golf.
Whenever they have a spare weekend, which isn’t often, they love to get on their motorcycle and hit the road for the day. Their motorcycle is currently in Arizona but they are planning to bring it back to Maine in time for summer.
Bob Plourde admitted he is not great at taking time off, but Lynne Plourde said there is hope for him. The couple just took their first honest-to-goodness vacation last year, their first trip not connected to any other purpose.
“We took a cruise to Alaska with a bunch of family and he had no computer, so he could not communicate,” Lynne Plourde said.
“It was terrible,” Bob Plourde said. “My laptop was nothing but a paperweight.”
Asked what advice they would offer a young couple just starting out, both Bob and Lynne Plourde advised being patient and willing to listen.
“Don’t go to bed mad,” Bob Plourde said, “That was our rule from the beginning.”
“It’s not always easy,” Lynne Plourde said. “You have to give and take, and always say, ‘I love you.’”
(The Lincoln County News is celebrating Valentine’s Day this February with “Couples of the County,” a twist on our “Characters of the County” column and a month-long celebration of local love. Do you have a suggestion for a subject? Email info@lcnme.com with the subject line “Characters of the County” and provide a way to contact the nominee.)
