Merchants march to FlatIrons, others march to different tune

BOULDER — Some merchants along Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall have elected to expand or move to the new FlatIron Crossing mall in Broomfield. Others intentionally chose a different path. One has decided to close its doors entirely.

Fitigues, a clothing store for men, women and children emphasizing comfort, ease and the simple pleasures in life, is closing its store on the downtown mall July 15 and moving to FlatIron Crossing instead of expanding with another store.

“We don’t like to over-saturate the market,´ said Stepanie Pastore of the Pearl Street Fitigues. “We have a niche market, and we thought we would be pulling customers from our own store if we opened another store at FlatIrons.” She said Fatigues has a store at the Webcor shopping mall in Scottsdale, Ariz. and they “kind of talked us into moving to FlatIrons.

“We have had a great business on Pearl Street, but the new mall enticed us because it is an area attraction. It will have a wider audience ,” Pastore said. The new Fitigues will be outside the actual mall in the Village where it try to have the same outdoor feel that the store on the downtown mall has. According to Pastore, Fitigues has about 30 stores and none of them are inside a mall, but more on the periphery.

Another business owner with the same philosophy is Marilyn Reynolds of the Maclaren Markowitz Gallery.

“I like the concept FlatIrons has of providing outdoor locations in the area they call The Village. They modeled it after downtown Boulder,” Reynolds said. “I also like their idea of grouping stores together. At one end of The Village are home-type stores and at the other end, they have clothing,” she said.

Reynolds is expanding her business by adding another location at FlatIrons instead of closing her existing store at the downtown mall. What’s happened downtown is that things are leveling off, and there isn’t as much business as there once was, she said. “I’m trying to be strategic so I can withstand any downturn, while I grow,” Reynolds said. FlatIrons offers a wonderful opportunity, she added, to reach an important market of residential and commercial customers.

“I considered opening another gallery in Denver, but FlatIrons is better,” she said. Maclaren Markowitz Gallery is a fine arts gallery featuring paintings, prints, ceramics, ethnic artifacts, jewelry and gifts. Reynolds also does business and home consulting.

Along with other businesses, L’Occitane Inc. is expanding to FlatIrons and will open a new store inside the mall.

“We included it in our expansion plan because we look for malls with upscale department stores as anchors,´ said Janine Maurino, a New York-based public relations spokeswoman for the company. L’Occitanee’s target customers are well-educated, 25-to 45-year-olds earning $40,000 to $50,000 or more – a population settling in large quantities around FlatIrons. The firm is expanding nationwide, adding 20 more stores this year to its base of about 30 stores presently.

No amount of persuasion, however, will convince Chris Alexander of Nature’s Own Imagination to move to any mall.

“We tried it 16 years ago, and it was a disaster,” he said of his venture at Boulder’s Crossroads Mall. In a year’s time he lost about $17,000. “Mall management is too controlling. They tell you when you have to be open and when and how much to advertise,” Alexander said.

His business downtown will close on the Pearl Street Mall when everything is sold or the end of July, whichever comes first. Then he will be ready to get out of the retail store business, a business he has been in for 26 years, and try an Internet presence.

Richard Polk, owner of Pedestrian Shops on the downtown mall, said he intentionally is not going to FlatIrons. Both Polk and his employees value the culture of the urban core with its closeness to a wide variety of shops, restaurants and fitness centers.

“We see the problem as a labor pool problem, not as an impact-on-our-business problem,” Polk said about the opening of the new regional mall. “They have been in here trying to dance out with our employees,” he said. “They had a job fair, but like your worst fears for a party, few people came.” We don’t want to hang on the highway, he reiterated.

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