“Whenever one of you tries my door and you pop your head in to say, ‘hi. How is everything going,’ it’s like getting a big bear bug.”
Over the past couple of Mondays, I have been fortunate enough to hear from shop owners interacting with one another. For the past several years, about every year or so, we gather business owners together to spend approximately 15 minutes in each other’s shops. We call it a progressive retail visit. Everyone gets to hear from each other about upcoming items, promotions, seeing expanded and new stores, and find out what they are most excited about in the weeks and months ahead.
Word of mouth is a huge benefit to shopping local, and we want everyone to be able to find items downtown no matter how unique. I am continuously impressed with the variety of items each business carries. For example, if you are looking for christening or baptismal gifts, Luecke’s Diamond Center may just be the place for you. Orange Kitten Yarns sells a nice variety of herbal (decaffeinated) teas. It is oftentimes next to impossible for shop owners to get into another shop to find that out.
Many operate similar hours and even when they are not at the store, they are still working. There is inventory, ordering, marketing, cleaning, before all the personal life things. By bringing shop owners together over these afternoons, things that catch their eye stay with them and get passed on to the customers. While we move at a solid pace, it is also heartening to watch everyone so engaged. There is appreciation and understanding. Eagerness to create the “bear hug” feeling which do not seem to happen often enough. The discussion about a particular scent of a homemade candle in 213 Mercantile’s new store lingers for a moment and that is the focus. From my vantage point, it is revitalizing for everyone.
The quote at the beginning of this column is from Deborah Ruschmeyer who owns the Artful Dressmaker. She also made the comment to everyone that by getting together in this capacity, she is pausing the entrepreneurial mode and connecting with everyone as people. There is unanimous agreement. There is a sense of irony in that I suppose but it really is all about connections. Listening to Jocelyn excitedly talk about why she wants her yarn shop to sell tea. A handful of store visits later, another shop owner explains his journey as a recovering addict and what owning a business has meant to him. From the business partner and good landlord to the best sense of self he has experienced by being a part of and connecting to others in downtown Monroe.
Not all the store visits are that revealing or on a similar topic, but how amazing for us to connect in a way that someone wants to share and feels safe enough to share that. So, I will not lie and say it is not about supporting businesses and getting one extra purchase downtown. The longer anyone stays downtown, the better for everyone. But it is also about something so much more. Downtown Monroe is a place where shop owners connect as people, where they feel the big bear hugs from one another. And when that happens, that is when the magic happens.
— Jordan Nordby is the executive director for Main Street Monroe. He can be reached at MonroeMainStreet@tds.net. Complete details on Main Street Monroe and its efforts can be found at mainstreetmonroe.org.
