Groton — For Gary Paul, watching customers drift away from his business for the last 10 years was like watching a family member die.

His shop, Paul’s TV on Bridge Street, used to draw generations of customers from the same families. “People would come in with their kids and grandkids and say, ‘This is where you buy something,'” said Paul, 54. “It wasn’t even a debatable thing.”

Then electronics prices eroded. It got cheaper to toss out a television than to fix one. Amazon invaded the market. Young shoppers, armed with smart phones, began price haggling.

Last month, Paul got word from his accountant that he’d lost money again last year, more than the year before. He’d spent 10 years trying to cut expenses and keep up with a swift-moving industry. Finally, he decided to give in to the inevitable.

He told his 92-year-old father, Arthur Paul, who has worked alongside him for 37 years, that the shop would close at the end of February.

“They don’t put any value on what we do anymore because a lot of the product is disposable,” Gary Paul said. “It doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore.”

“I’m still trying to talk him out of it,” his father said.

Arthur Paul started the business decades ago, opening the first Paul’s TV in the Westerly area in 1947. Most homes didn’t have televisions yet, but he knew they were coming. He sold radios and installed antennas first, then broke into the television market. He ran the business for 10 to 15 years before selling it to move briefly out of state. He returned to Connecticut in 1962 and became an electronics supervisor at Electric Boat.

His youngest son, Gary, learned the trade working with his father in the family’s garage in Mystic. Gary Paul then attended Norwich Technical High School and after graduating, decided to open a business of his own. Arthur Paul quit his job at EB and joined his son in the venture. The first Paul’s TV in Groton opened in 1980 at 1289 Gold Star Highway.

It thrived. Twenty shops within 10 miles offered the same repair services, but Paul’s TV still outgrew the plaza on Gold Star Highway. In 1990, Gary Paul bought an abandoned car dealership on Bridge Street, revamped it and opened the store in its current building. Gary Paul’s brother, Steve Paul, joined the business the year it opened on Bridge Street.

The store hired staff to meet the demand, reaching a high of 16 employees. At the business’ peak in 2000, Paul’s TV handled 23,000 repairs in one year.

Gary Paul said he never imagined the business would change as it did. But about 10 years ago, it began falling away. People stopped bringing in televisions to be fixed, so the business adapted to meet the new demand. Paul bought trucks to perform service calls at customers’ homes. His technicians installed satellites for Dish Network and DIRECTV, maintained systems and offered upgrades.

But electronics prices kept falling. Paul tried cutting costs to keep going by fixing the company’s trucks himself. He put in energy-efficient lights and motion sensors to save on electricity. He and his father took on building maintenance, even repairing the heating system when it failed this past New Year’s Day.

Meanwhile, he watched his competitors fail, one by one.

In 2010, the shop branched out and began repairing appliances — refrigerators, ranges, microwaves, dishwashers, air conditioning units, whatever people needed — to try to hold on. The store’s high of 23,000 repairs a year fell to 4,000 per year in 2012.

Steve Paul retired in 2015. Even with large clients like Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, Gary Paul said he knew the company didn’t have enough business to sustain itself.

He didn’t want to close and thought about his dozen employees. “They’re not just people that I give a paycheck to,” he said. “They’re like family. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Keith Hitchock, 59, an employee for nine years, said he knew things were not good. “Gary’s tried to do a lot of things to keep the money coming in, but it hasn’t been the same,” he said. “Five or six years ago, we might have made $200 selling a new TV. Now we’re lucky if we make $20 or $30.”

Gary Paul said he knew what he had to do when he learned of last year’s losses. It was still difficult, he said.

“There’s anxiety, there’s fear of the unknown, there’s sadness because we’re watching something that we built together end," Gary Paul said. He can recall his accountant telling him years ago that the good days wouldn’t last forever. “I regret not being more appreciative of when things were good,” he said.

Arthur Paul still gets to the store at 8:15 a.m., six days a week, to open at 9 a.m. Sometimes he stops in on Sundays after church. He closes the store each day with his son at 6 p.m., then dusts and vacuums before leaving.

“I love to work,” Arthur Paul said. “When he closes, I’m going to do something. I don’t know what. But something.”

Gary Paul plans to stay at the store until he liquidates his inventory. He's been saying it for years, but he hopes someone listens: “If people don’t start patronizing the small businesses, you’re going to have nothing left,” he said. “You’ll have Amazon, Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe’s.”

“It’s getting sad the way it’s going,” Arthur Paul said. “It really is.”

 d.straszheim@theday.com