Superior Business

Business on Main Street is getting weary and I am wondering if it is because of the Recession that is on us or if the fact of running a business in a modern day ghost town takes its toll after a few months. This morning, Bill and I spent poking around the few stores open in our fair city looking for a suitable Mother's Day gift for me. The stores on Highway 60 were open and we greeted a few friends we knew at one of the shops down there. Traffic was whizzing by on a warm May day and prospects for doing more business looking promising.

We headed uptown to check out the shops on Main Street. One gift shop had already put a notice on her door that today she'd be open at ten AM and she was having a "Going Out of Business" sale. She's had some real Hard Times this year in her family and hadn't been open since the first of March. So seeing her "Going Out of Business" sign wasn't surprising. Sad, though. At ten fifteen, she still wasn't open so we urged Chuy up Magma Street to check out a yard sale that was advertised. I met an extremely chatty four year old, named Julia, who tried to sell me her doll with cerise pink hair. "She smells of cotton candy!" the child commended. "Or you could buy this one..." (It was an identical match to the pink haired doll but had bright purple hair), "but she smells like bubble gum!" (Julia, you'll make a fine sales lady someday!) But no, I resisted and bought one of her grandma's old cookbooks instead.

The Going Out of Business shop still hadn't opened when we returned to Main Street so we walked downtown to another store that's only open on the week-ends. It's run by two convivial ladies and they were having a massive "Fifteen Percent Off Everything In The Store!" sale, so of course, I had to duck in and check things out. I picked out a couple of trays and a bright green wicker basket and talked to the ladies as they rang up my purchases. I told them about the demise of the shop down the street and said how sorry I was that she would be leaving. They tsked-tsked themselves, then one lowered her voice and said she expected that they too would be calling it quits when the torpid summer days set in. (Yeah, you hardly find any shops open in July and August in this neck of the woods. I guess folks just get too hot to shop and take off for the beach.) But instead of just closing for a few months, they'd be closing up and leaving. Being open on the week-ends was just not bringing in enough cash to pay the rent and meet their bills.

I am sorry to see them leave. It won't leave hardly anything open and won't provide even a casual shopper an excuse to come peruse Main Street. It shocks me to see how dreary business is done in this town. For instance, at the beginning of Main Street, is a fairly new (opened last year) restaurant/bar. It has a top of the line building and an adjoining garden patio area. When they were open one day in January, the owner told us excitedly of his plans to have Ladies Night on Thursdays, and each week-end during February and March he had some sort of entertainment planned to drum up business. He ennumerated so many plans I asked him if he had a website I might refer to. He said, yes, soon, it would be up and running. Well, since that long ago day in January, we've found him open only about half a dozen times. Most days, even week-ends, it's shut up tighter than a drum with only a "Closed" sign on the door, never any mention as to when he might possibly be open. Townspeople fume to each other about the strangeness of a brand new business being more closed than open and "What's with that?" There's a rumor that it might be for sale. But mostly, the "Closed" sign is what you see.

Last week, I took an afternoon business seminar given by the Central Arizona College in conjunction with the Small Business Administration. The goal is to create more businesses in Pinal County. The instructor told us to prepare a business plan for what we expect to do in this community. Here's my plan: I'm going to rent one of the dilapidated storefronts on Main Street. I'll gussy up the front of it with bright colored rainbow paint. Bill will sell framed prints from this Australian Outback artist he's fond of and who is trying to get a following in this country. I'll stock it with my Something Fishy Hawaiian print shirts I've been sewing and the patchwork and drawstring bags Gloria and I have been working on. We'll be open only once or twice a month. We'll send fliers out to the locals and take advertisements in the local papers on the week-ends when we will be open so folks will get excited and come out and see what we're offering. And you know what I'm going to call it? Superior's "Never Open" Shop! So when the few days a month when we are open, it will be a red letter day for Superior. What can be any different than the way things are done now?