Side by side: In business and in life
They met over a coffee maker.
Three years ago, Kirk Miller ventured into a Lexington kitchen store, looking for a Krups coffee maker. It wasn’t in stock so Tina Lowry, the owner of the store, Ladles & Linens Kitchen Shoppe, ordered it.
Two weeks later, the coffee maker arrived, but Miller kept coming by the shop in downtown Lexington.
Lowry and Miller married in September 2005, a few months after Miller opened his own store to suit his tastes.
An outdoor enthusiast and an Appalachian Trail through-hiker, Kirk Miller opened Walkabout Outfitter on Nelson Street in Lexington. The store, which recently moved to Washington Street, sells outdoor apparel and hiking and camping gear, with brand names that include Northface and Mountain Hardware.
In the past year and a half, the Millers opened additional outlets of both their stores side-by-side on Market Street in downtown Roanoke.
They are plowing their way in a world where success is slim for small businesses. Two-thirds of such entrepreneurs’ businesses fail within two years, reports the U.S. Small Business Administration. In 2005, there were 671,800 small businesses nationally. But 544,800 closed during that same year, according to the SBA.
Retail entwines the lives of this Rockbridge County couple, who are juggling the demands of four stores and their first child, Alexander, who was born in February.
