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Going smaller: retail incubator launches in Niwot

Luring new businesses to town has been an ongoing challenge for the Niwot Business Association, so they've decided to start growing their own. Last month, the group launched the Little Holiday Shops of Niwot, a new retail project to help fledgling entrepreneurs get off the ground.

"We've been working on it for about a year," NBA member and project leader Leigh Suskin said about the initiative, which was set to debut in March 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "Our intention was let's help people get started with micro-businesses. I've been supporting them with business plan or marketing plan assistance, if they'd like...The idea is to support them where they are, and a lot of them have aspirations to roll out on their own eventually."

The Little Holiday Shops is a collection of 20 local businesses and artisans selling "one-of-a-kind and carefully curated offerings" in a shared retail space in Cottonwood Square. Fourteen of the 20 are from Niwot, but all of them have ties to surrounding communities. Among them are familiar names such as Inkberry Books and Fly Away Home, but many more are start-ups (Boulder Mama, Baxter Jones) and online vendors looking to establish a physical presence (Zone913). "We also have three stores that closed because of Covid," Suskin said.

The combined arrangement allows the merchants to share the cost of rent and overhead, as well as the risk and administrative burden of starting a business. The owners also take turns manning the shops and greeting shoppers, though there is an "ambassador" on hand as well.

"Everybody is happy to share what they know, answer questions about their work, and even teach people," Suskin said.

The Little Holiday Shops is open Tuesday through Sunday through December 31. If it proves successful, Suskin and the NBA are planning to open a permanent Little Shops of Niwot sometime in 2021, though not necessarily in the same location. So far, the results are "fantastic," and Suskin said she is getting inquiries from potential vendors all the time. She also said a number of the existing Little Shops merchants have expressed an interest in leasing their own space in Niwot.

"Worst-case scenario, we'll be back every holiday shopping season, but I'd really like to expand it and have it in more places."

That's also the aim of Niwot Economic Development Director Catherine McHale, who assisted with the Little Shops project, along with NBA members Kathy Trauner, Anne Postle, Patty Weaver, and Tony Santelli. She said the idea originated with Trauner, who successfully converted Fly Away Home from a pop-up to a permanent store, and wanted to get the message out to other vendors. That fit perfectly with McHale's mission of finding creative ways to introduce Niwot to potential businesses.

"One of the great things Niwot has is this charming downtown, but it also has lower rental rates than perhaps some of the surrounding towns and cities. So we were trying to think, how can we let prospective retailers know that they can take a space in Niwot, either a full retail space that would be more reasonably priced, or maybe a smaller space for a retailer who is looking to downsize due to the current circumstances... Kathy had this great idea about making a system for pop-ups, sort of like a trial retail experience."

Even before the pandemic hit, small brick-and-mortar retail stores were losing ground to the Amazon.coms of the world, and before that, the Wal-Marts of the world, which benefit from volume purchasing and the ability to operate on thin margins. This was felt acutely in Niwot, as shoppers often bypassed the town's little shops for big-box options in nearby Boulder and Longmont. To help combat this, McHale and the NBA have been considering innovative retail concepts that use Niwot's small size to its advantage.

One is the pop-up model-temporary retail or restaurant spaces lasting from hours to weeks. Pop-up stores offer a number of advantages for both large and small sellers, including flexibility and mobility. They also require less up-front investment and no long-term commitment. This has proven useful for many retailers across the country during the pandemic, as consumers change their shopping habits in response to lockdowns, social distancing requirements, and changes in household finances.

In Niwot, the pop-up model was adapted to create the monthly Sidewalk Sales, where shops and restaurants took their operations outside for the day, allowing visitors to browse or dine in the open air. By many accounts, these events were a boon to the town's struggling small businesses, and helped them recoup at least part of the revenues lost during the state and county stay-at-home orders in effect through March, April, and May.

The micro-retail Little Shops project is an outgrowth of the pop-up model, but bigger in scope and, hopefully, permanent. According to McHale, it allows the NBA to boost Niwot's shopping appeal without taking on a lot of risk all at once, and, importantly, fills a vacancy in Cottonwood Square.

"Alex Chlebek has been a really great supporter of this project," McHale said of the shopping center's owner. "He wants all the spaces to be filled if they can be, so he is offering that space at a discounted rate. He's taking the long-term view that some of these vendors could turn into permanent retailers in the future."

Like Suskin, McHale is thrilled with the results from the opening weeks of the Little Holiday Shops, especially after other local stores started reporting an increase in foot traffic as a result. She thinks that bodes well not just for the future of the project, but also for the Niwot business community as a whole as it confronts what promises to be a difficult winter.

"I am telling people to do their holiday shopping in Niwot because you can this year. We have a wide variety of little independent businesses and you can get everything you need-books, apparel, art, whatever. I think right now our community really has the power to decide and it's where they spend their dollars that is really going to help."

 

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