Summer 2006

Before and After: Making the Right Move By Kasia Dawidowska

Last summer, Caroline Warner, owner of The Welch Company, a gift shop with a long family tradition, made an executive decision. Instead of renovating her store, she decided to start fresh in a new location. “It was time to rebuild and reinvent ourselves,” she recalls. It was time to start over completely, not just add a new sign or a coat of paint.

Before the move, when people commented on the store they would often say it “had a lot of character,” but to Warner, that was just a nice way to say it was time to make some changes. The shop occupied 4,000 square feet in a building owned by Warner’s in-laws, and had been in that location for 140 years. During that time the business had evolved from a general store carrying hardware and paint, into a gift shop where people searched for unusual birthday presents.

The building was old and despite many repairs still had a lot of problems that were preventing the store from living up to its full potential. “We had old radiators in the middle of the sales floor,” she recalls. One year, a significant amount of merchandise was soaked by rainwater draining through leaks in the back room. “We were sinking money into that store,” she says. And the building wasn’t getting younger.

Bright new beginning

That all changed with the new location. The Welch Company’s new store was built seaside in Scituate Harbor, MA—right next door to the old building. “It’s a beautiful new building, three stories high, with a glass/wood stairway,” says Warner, who designed most of the store’s interior. “It has a light, airy, beachy feeling.”

A designer friend, Tom Hughes, created the store’s new starfish logo and a new store sign, featuring the starfish and a wave on a blue background. Inside, walls were painted a soothing, sea blue with a blue-starfish-and-wave motif painted up high, near the ceiling.

The new location has lots of windows, making the whole space brighter, says Warner. “It’s light inside, even on a rainy day.” The new space is clean, fresh and comfortable, making it easier to display products, most of which are on white, custom-made shelves.

As part of the move, Warner also invested in the finishing touches, such as custom-designed gift-wrap that matches the store’s look and has now become its signature, like the sea blue Tiffany jewelry box. “We used to buy gift-wrapping paper from anywhere,” says Warner. “The old store didn’t have any continuity to it.”

Now everything matches—from the business’s logo, to the storefront sign, to the walls and fixtures, to the gift wrap, creating a cohesive store identity, a familiar brand that customers can easily identify. All of these details, when taken together, “streamlined the business,” Warner says. “Everything works so much better now.”

The store sells high-quality, brand-name cosmetics, gifts, and home decor accents, everything chosen to match the seaside “cottage-y” feeling of this Massachusetts coast town. There are Crabtree & Evelyn soaps, Burt’s Bees creams and lotions, a huge selection of bed and bath linens, doormats, wind chimes, as well as special-order furniture and bedding. “We also have beautiful glassware, dinnerware and serving pieces,” says Warner.

A business in focus

Even though The Welch Company moved from a very large space to a smaller one—the new store is 2,800 square feet—the downsizing has had a positive effect on several levels. “We had to reassess our buying habits and home-in on what sells best,” says Warner. “In a way, less square footage is better—it’s easier to know the merchandise well and help customers find exactly what they’re looking for.”

And the new store has better traffic flow, she says. The old store was more spread out, which caused some problems. She cites as an example a side room in which linens were displayed, adding that there were no salespeople in the actual room to assist customers. This, despite the fact that she considers customer service her number-one priority. The new location not only gave the store a fresh start, but also allowed Warner to address some of the old store’s deficiencies.

Opening the new location, even though it was only a move next door, was “almost like opening a new store,” Warner says. “We have completely reinvented ourselves. We are more focused now on what we do really well, which is excellent customer service, and quality products at a fair price.”

Kasia Dawidowska

Dawidowska writes frequently for both trade and consumer magazines. She can be reached at kasia76@gmail.com.