For all that downtown has grown in terms of retail activity in the past five years -- from a veritable dead zone to a space with pockets of strong restaurants, bars and the like -- there hasn't been a whole lot of actual "retail" storefronts selling goods and services.
Heather Garrett Home is one of the pioneers, a purveyor of home furnishings and accessories.
Not that her dive into running a retail storefront was pre-planned when she moved into the space, mind you.
"Never, never, never would I have devised to become a retailer," Garrett told BCR with a laugh. "And certainly not in the last two years!"
In many ways, the story of Garrett's shop -- an interior design space that morphed into including a formal retail storefront function this winter -- neatly parallels that of downtown as a whole, where serendipitous accidents and connections have made a richer scene for so many businesses in the past few years.
Few, though, have as much an evolutionary tale as Garrett's.
Garrett had long worked in and around arts and design, from an undergraduate degree in art history to training at the Parsons School of Design to time at Sotheby's to a career in ceramics and painting. After working with private clients in interior design, she moved to Durham in the early 2000s.
In the Bull City, she found herself initially in southwest Durham, working as a designer out of her house for everything from households to show houses.
Time brought her to a loft unit at the Bullington Warehouse on Duke St., first as a showroom of sorts and then as an office, and finally as a residence. But eventually, a larger workspace was needed.
Priced out of affordable buildings during the late-2000s downtown buying spree, Garrett's boyfriend (Whiskey proprietor Rhys Botica) came across the old Thom McAn retail space on W. Main, then being vacated by The Republik as they moved to other downtown digs.
It's an 1894 structure, wider inside than it appears from outside, and with a soaring interior ceiling with a tin roof, and plenty of natural light, it was an inspiring place for Garrett to work.
"I just really renovated it as a showroom, locked by appointment only for clients," she said. "It didn't make sense to have a retail presence here.
"And that's changed. I was back there doing my design work, and people would ring my doorbell and knock and say, 'Can I come on in?'"
But with an advertising campaign in Durham Magazine (obligatory disclaimer: I'm a paid freelance columnist for the magazine), design clients start perking up in numbers, and Garrett was inspired to start advertising a bona fide retail component to the business, too.
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At first, the by-accident in-store visits didn't even represent a blip on the profit-and-loss radar for the business, according to Garrett. Even after she dedicated some Saturday hours to walk-in traffic, initially the foot traffic wasn't exactly beating down the door.
"I literally would go six solid weeks without one human coming in," Garrett said of the early days of the Main Street storefront. "[I was] maybe seeing like three people walk by on Saturday.
But -- for reasons Garrett herself can't entirely explain, though the "critical mass" of more businesses downtown along the Main Street axis is a plausible reason -- that started to shift, even amidst a recession.
"I would say that change didn't really become dramatic until, really, maybe six or eight months ago. Suddenly, people are coming, and they're going to the Farmers Market, and then they're hanging around," Garrett said.
"Now, it's constant. And I'm constantly busy," she added, adding that she's added some part-time help to assist with front of shop duties -- and that she's expanded to weekday retail hours as well.
"Since that time, there's a lot of business going on in this
store, people coming in to pick up a pillow, or a shower gift or
something," Garrett told BCR, noting that lunchtime traffic from eateries like Toast and Beyú Caffé has helped bring people in the store often looking for smaller things.
To meet that wide range of buyers, from design clients looking to redo a house to the casual shopper, Garrett keeps a range of goods in the store -- everything from samples of furniture available through her suppliers, to smaller items like household accessories and other design-oriented goods.
She's is focusing on North Carolina-produced goods wherever she can, although she still works with some favorite vendors in San Francisco and elsewhere.
Garrett sees her competition as fashionable housewares and furniture retailers like Crate & Barrel and West Elm, and says she wants to differentiate her offerings by the personal touches available through a designer working directly with local vendors.
"I have to be able to offer furniture that is at that price point, but that's custom, where you can pick your height, your length, your fabric and all that. So I want to beat the market that way."
Garrett described her relationship with one Hickory furniture vendor, which has picked up on more modern stylings and specializes in upholstery, allowing her to offer seating and other furniture that picks up on high style design trends while sourcing the product within the state.
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The designer notes that the uptick in business portends a broader interest in Durham's renewal, too.
She says that a couple of national magazines are sniffing around Durham's design and arts scene for a possible profile exploring the area's critical mass in that area.
"They do these city guides. And Durham's never -- there's never been a reason to do a city guide on Durham before," she laughs.
And it happens on the ground, too.
"I notice a young crowd thinking of moving to Durham. It's not as Duke student-driven as I thought," Garrett says. "It's lots of people driving in from southwest Durham and Chapel Hill and parking for lunch, and just walking around."
Just the other weekend, a group of eight younger people came into the store and started looking around curiously.
They told Garrett they'd flown in from Los Angeles, having heard about Durham's transformation and telling her that they were thinking about relocating here, but -- meandering along the usual highway paths through old industrial Durham -- hadn't seen much of interest to date.
Garrett directed them down West Main, towards Brightleaf Square and The Federal and Duke's campus, trying to steer them towards areas of particular interest.
They came back a couple of hours later, "psyched" by what they'd seen.
Heather Garrett Home is holding the final day of its spring Sidewalk Sale today from 12pm to 5pm at their 313 W. Main St. store. Regular store hours are Mon.-Fri. 11am-5pm, Sat. 11am-3pm.
If you want to buy a car, you would have to get the home loans. Furthermore, my sister always uses a car loan, which occurs to be the most rapid.
Posted by: MorrowTerry22 | December 02, 2011 at 07:39 AM