Downtown - It's More Than Bricks & Sticks
By Rick Segel

Spring was just starting to arrive. Birds started to sing, and flowers were starting to bud, signaling the long hard winter had finally come to an end.

A young, single, 22 year-old woman named Sara had waited nervously for this day for the last four months. It was the day her boss, the owner of Green’s Hat Shop in Everett, Massachusetts, was coming home from her Florida vacation. Sara was so proud of what she had done. She ran the store alone for those fours months while the owner was gone. She bought all of the merchandise which meant that she had to take the streetcar and the subway into Boston at 6:30 AM, buy the goods, and bring them back to the store before the store opened at 9:00 AM. She went through that routine two days a week. Then she had to record everything she bought in the old receiving journal.

She then priced the hats, always looking for any extra mark-up she could take. She had to be careful on pricing the goods because the customers would “handel” (a Jewish expression for negotiating the price). If she priced the merchandise too high, they wouldn’t even look at it, but if she priced it too low that became the starting point in the negotiations and the store could end up losing.

But Sara was proud because she made good buys during that winter of 1938. There was a lot of money in the checkbook on that early April day.

She forgot about working the six long days a week and how she had to shovel coal to keep the store warm, or even shoveling the snow away from the sidewalk. After all, she was young and didn’t mind. She was just happy to have a job at the end of the Great Depression.

But she finally realized what she had done for Green’s Hat Shop. She added lots of new customers, sold the hats at a good price, and the store looked good—clean and neat as if it were her own business.

Surely, the Greens would be thrilled with what she had done. Of course they would be. Why wouldn’t they? After all, she had worked like a dog for them, built up their business and made them a lot of money. Sara was sure they would complain if she asked for a raise. She had it all figured out. All she wanted was a raise to the unthinkable amount of $35 a week. She had been making $25 for the last two years. How could they complain? But she knew they were tough and that’s why she was nervous.

The day had arrived and Mr. and Mrs. Green came in. They looked through the store sternly, reviewing all of the buys. They checked the Receiving Register, then the Daily Sales Book, and finally the checkbook. A half smile came over Mr. Green’s face. They looked at one another and Mrs. Green went for the shopping bag she had carried into the store. She pulled out a box of chocolates and gave them to Sara and told her about the wonderful job she had done.

This was the moment — the moment when destiny called.

Sara fought off her nervousness and asked for her raise. They didn’t take it well at all. They said they would have to think it over. A week had passed when Mr. Green finally spoke about the raise again. He said that they had decided to give her $30 a week, but maybe they could see their way clear to give her $35 a week for the next year.

That was the greatest thing he could have ever done for that young girl, because that became the motivation to start her own business. She knew she could do it, especially with the support of the tall good looking shoe salesman named Leo who worked next door. He believed in her and told her to go for it. But a woman starting and running a business in 1938 was not the norm — women were supposed to stay home and raise children.

That was the beginning of Ruth’s Hat Shop in downtown Everett, Massachusetts. No, she didn’t use her own name of Sara, because frankly she didn’t like it — and besides, Ruth was the name of Leo’s sister. Ruth had no children of her own and naming the store after her certainly would help Sara’s matrimonial plans.

So on March 29, 1939, Ruth’s Hat Shop was born.

That little hat shop stayed in a downtown for the next 58 years, moving in 1950 to Medford, Massachusetts, which was one town over. It eventually grew to 10,000 square feet doing about 2 million dollars in volume while expanding into sportswear and dresses.

That was the business I came into in December 1972 after Leo died.

So what does this have to do with the downtowns of today?

Everything! A downtown isn’t a place made up of just bricks and sticks. It’s a place where lives were spent, children raised, and where the true spirit of America can be found. It was and is a place where entrepreneurs set out on a journey to capture their piece of the American pie. It was and is the incubator of ideas and dreams. It was and is where the freedom to make your own rules exists and where your destiny is determined by your own hard work.

It’s more than just the preservation of a building or adding an extra parking space. It’s more than adding new pavers, planters, or decorative lights. It’s about people and dreams.

The downtown of today is the new frontier for entrepreneurs. It’s the place for the Sara Segels of the world to take a chance and rewrite the rules of retailing.

It’s not going to happen at the mall that has become a combination of retail giants whose names appear on the stock pages, who have built cookie-cutter stores that are the same in San Antonio as they are in Seattle or Savannah. Malls have created the homogenization of America. The mall retailers of today are but key carriers for corporate giants. Sure, they work hard to make their stores look the same, filling out reports that are dissected in an office building thousands of miles away by people who have never stepped foot in the state where the store is located. They are managers who get transferred as often as some people change the oil in their car.

You see, I spent a lifetime in a downtown. It was the place that I went after school to see my parents, and then the place where I worked for 25 years. I saw the thriving downtown and I saw my government destroy my downtown with misguided urban renewal. I saw the construction of a pedestrian mall that blocked off Main Street so that no one could see the front of my store and my magnificent windows. I saw them take away parking places to put in a Ring Road to eliminate the congestion. Who ever said that congestion was bad? Show me congestion, and I’ll show you a busy downtown. I’ve seen 97 stores close in a downtown. But I have also spoken at over 90 malls all across North America that are starting to go through the same problems as downtowns experienced in the 70’s. I have seen malls with 50% vacancy rates that have beautiful bricks and landscape with plenty of free parking that have become tax losses for real estate investment trusts.

I have worked in downtowns that have anchor stores that are candy shops, hobby shops, drug stores, candle shops and even libraries. How can that be? Those candy shops, hobby shops and drug stores made that transition from retailer to merchant, from being just another face on Main Street to being the destination of a buying trip. They made their stores so special and unique that people beat a path to their doors.

Did they invent the better mousetrap?

Are their stores beautiful with great bricks and sticks?

NO! What these stores have are people — people who spend the time to know their customers. People who know their customers’ names and can anticipate what they want to buy. People who work their business because it is their life. People who have owner-occupied stores and can solve a problem on the spot. People who don’t need approval from the district manager who will be in next week. People who understand what Relationship Marketing and Database Marketing mean without ever knowing the names of these concepts. People who know that Mrs. Smith might like that blue sweater that just came in and call her up to tell her. People who don’t compete with the mall stores because they want to be different. People who understand that you have to WOW a customer to win a customer. People who constantly try to get better, who keeping learning new ways to do things. People who go to their trade marts and hear speakers like me who share ideas that can make their stores better.

These stores are the businesses that will help to build the downtowns, because downtowns will be rebuilt one good store at a time. These stores will become the role models for other businesses to come and stake their claim and for people to leave their corporate jobs seeking the independence of owning their own business. When these courageous leaders succeed, the chain stores will follow.

It is our responsibility to give these new pioneers all the help and education we can. If we teach them how to fish, they will be able to fish for a lifetime. It is up to us to teach them how to pinpoint market to their customers. We must teach then how to advertise in the New America, because the local newspaper doesn’t work like it used to work. Because people don’t read like they used to read. Because we are now being bombarded by more information than ever before. There are more specialty magazines, national newspaper like USA Today, more radio stations, more TV and cable stations than even our TV sets can handle. They are competing with a healthy catalog industry, and of course, the new shark on the block that has the potential of eating up all of the others is the Internet.

We must give them the tools to compete, because once they have them, they can compete with the biggest of boxed retailers.

But we must teach then to be different and that “good enough” isn’t good enough anymore.

They must learn that price is but one tool in the retailer’s arsenal and that the uniqueness of the product rules. They have to learn that the giants can be beat with the giant killer called service — that service is the brand of the future and that time is the currency of the new millennium.

We have to help reinvent the merchants of the future in becoming the leaders in their niches. They must understand that if they find a niche, they will get rich. These niches include being the place to buy a Mother of the Bride dress, or the place that will shorten a pair of pants while you wait. Or the restaurant that will make you an order of bacon and eggs at 1:00 in the afternoon, or the place you go for the most interesting collection of local crafts, the place you go to have your great grandparents’ marriage picture reframed that you wouldn’t trust with just anyone.

You see, the downtowns have changed. They have reinvented themselves almost without a plan, an architect or city planner. Those people are only trying to hold the lines of the sails tight as the groundswell winds of change are moving the downtown from the place you bought your basic supplies to the place you go to for something special. Specialty store retailing which at one time was the fringe of downtown shopping has become the very essence of downtowns.

The downtown is not a mall and it will not be what it once was.

It can be better than both of those. It can reinvent itself into something as special as the merchandise it sells. It will preserve and honor the past, but will stand proud and rebellious of the future.

The two operative words of the Brave New World, if I may borrow Mr. Huxley’s title, are different and fun. Different because it is the word used right after someone says WOW. The downtown must be a WOW, and fun is part of that WOW.

Government investment in downtowns has paid handsome royalties, but it is so much more than bricks and sticks.

It is up to us to preserve and protect our national heritage, our memories and our future. It is what we are. It is what we are all about. It is what I am.

Sure, I love working for Shell Oil Company training their dealers, and speaking at malls and trade centers. I enjoy working with companies like Dollar Tree Stores and Woodworkers Warehouse. It’s fun.

But the downtown is my passion.

My other passion is the power of fun in the success of retailers today.

We are in an entertainment society. Make it fun and they will come. It is no longer a nicety. It is a necessity for survival. It is the differentiating difference. It allows Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock Café to charge $10 for a hamburger. It is the entertainment value that makes both Disney and Warner Brother stores the leaders in almost every mall that they are in. They don’t sell a thing that anyone needs. They never have a sale and some people would even classify them as expensive. Yet they do between two and three times the volume of any other store in the mall.

To think, what is Disney selling really? A T-shirt with a rat on it. Yet they make it fun!

They make it fun in the same way some of the merchants I have worked with in downtowns whose stores weren’t pretty, but the atmosphere and attitude was fun. You know what I mean — the stores that are the “Cheers” of retailing, the place where everyone knows your name, and where shopping is a social experience. A store with a fun personality will out perform the cookie-cutter store in the same way David beat Goliath or the Ewoks from “Star Wars” beat the evil empire.

Now is the time for downtowns not to react to the next retail craze — it is our time to create it. Our future is brighter now than it has ever been.

Just as it was for Sara Segel back on the April day in 1938. It will be filled with disappointments and set backs, but that’s okay because that is how true success is accomplished. Just as it was for Sara.

You see, Sara never graduated from high school, her father died when she was 16, and she helped raise her five brothers and sisters. Because of a downtown, she had the opportunity to make a living, make a contribution to society and be a shining light and inspiration to women everywhere. That is what America is all about and I am proud of my mother and proud of the work I do that keeps the spirit of Sara Segel alive today.

You see, it’s a lot more than just bricks and sticks.