Small retailer find success by creating niche

Isadore Million must be doing something right.

The owner of Penny Lane Coffee House in Boulder has been able to keep his business going with half a dozen Starbucks in the city.

Small independent businesses such as Penny Lane have to develop strategies to compete with large national chains such as Wal-Mart, Target, Borders Books & Music, Barnes & Noble, Home Depot and Best Buy.

With Wal-Mart coming to Broomfield and a Wal-Mart Supercenter being considered in Longmont, it will continue to be important for local independent retailers to find their niche outside the big-box retailers in order to survive.

“It’s easy to be afraid of the competition, but you need to concentrate on the things that work for you,” Million said.

Penny Lane, 1795 Pearl St., offers activities Starbucks doesn’t: The coffeehouse has music six nights a week, including an “open mike night” on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Also, Penny Lane has a poetry reading every Monday night run by Tom Peters. Notable poets from all over the country read their works on Mondays, and people also are welcome to bring their own poetry to share with the group.

At Penny Lane, the staff of about 22 employees gets to know customers on a personal level, which often doesn’t happen at large chains, Million said. Also, the staff stays a long time whereas large chains often have a large turnover. And staff members have more flexible schedules than most chains offer.

“At most large chains you can’t say, ‘Joe is going to work for me for two days,'” Million said.

Additionally, customers can eat locally made food: Penny Lane gets its pastries from Spruce Confections Pastry Shop, Brillig Works and Boulder Breadworks.

Million admits business has dropped some in two years, but he attributes it more due to continued downturn in the economy than Starbucks.

It’s not just coffee businesses, every small independent business must be able to “go to the mattresses” and compete with the big kahunas.

In the movie “You’ve Got Mail,” big bad Fox Books swallows up a small locally owned book store, the Shop Around the Corner, forcing it to shut down after about 40 years in business.

Fortunately, David Bolduc, owner of the Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St. on the Pearl Street Mall, has been able to avoid such a scenario with giants such as Borders and Barnes & Noble nearby.

Bolduc said he buys for the Boulder market whereas chains are buying for all their stores. The 20,000-square-foot Boulder Book Store has a section that features books written by local authors and a section called Boulder’s bestsellers that features the best-selling books in Boulder. Additionally, Boulder Book Store has book signings, which are becoming rare at large national chains, Bolduc said.

Boulder Book Store also has given the Boulder County School District more than $50,000 worth of books.

“Our roots are in the community,” Bolduc said. “We’re available and interested in interacting with the community and customers.”

Lynne Milot, who owns Grandrabbit’s Toy Shoppe, 2525 Arapahoe Ave. in Boulder, with new partner Marilyn Walker, said she gets most of her items from dealers who will only sell to specialty stores, so the inventory is different than what you’d find at large chains such as KB Toys or Target that also sell toys.

“Most the things I carry are not carried by the large chains,” Milot said.

Grandrabbit’s, which has been in Boulder 26 years, also offers personal shopping, where employees can do shopping for customers to save them time.

The experience and atmosphere at Grandrabbit’s are different than what you’d find at a large chain store, Milot said.

“It kind of takes you back to a simpler time,” she said. “The experience is reminiscent of a time when things were simpler. & There’s an ambiance here. It’s kind of like a sense of magic.”

The plan is to expand Grandrabbit’s Web site, at grtoys.com, and add more stores in Colorado, Milot said.

Kids & Co. Furniture, 2525 Arapahoe Ave., is different from competitors such as Babies ‘R’ Us, Burlington Coat Factory, which has a section called Baby Depot, and Pottery Barn Kids in that it works with local artists who can hand-paint names or designs on the furniture, said owner Linda Jones.

Jones said she tries hard to “not to carry the merchandise that mass merchants carry.” Kids & Co. gets its merchandise from about 25 companies and 100 accessory companies from all over the United States and Canada.

Jones — who has owned Kids & Co. for nine years and been in retail for 30 years — said she hears all the time that people like shopping locally owned retailers because they want to keep their money in Boulder.

Jones started looking for children’s furniture years ago, when her daughter, Katie, now 12, outgrew her crib, but she found a huge void in the area, so she decided to start her own furniture store.

“It’s something that kind of comes naturally to me,” she said.

Rocky Mountain Kids and Rocky Mountain Kids Shoes, 2525 Arapahoe Ave., carry many things that can’t be found at Nordstrom, which is its main competitor, said Stephanie Honness, who owns the stores with her mother, Connie Allen.

“You have to be able to find something (at our stores) you won’t everywhere else,” Honness said. “You have to provide a superior product to what everyone else has.”

Rocky Mountain Kids, for example, carries gift cards handmade by local artists and a winter fleece line produced in nearby Golden.

Allen and Honness launched Rocky Mountain Kids together in 1998 and added Rocky Mountain Kids Shoes two years ago. Allen, who managed a gift store in Evergreen, and Honness, who worked in a children’s clothing store in Evergreen and has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Colorado at Boulder, bring more than 20 years of experience to the table.

“It’s a whole experience from the minute you walk in the store,” Honness said.

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