Local retailers report slow-to-steady sales
Local businesswoman Paulette Flicker has a David vs. Goliath approach to local retail – she’s David while Goliath slashes prices, doesn’t know your name and doesn’t care.”We’re like the little guys watching the giants fight it out,” she said of the downturn in the nation’s economy. “Small businesses will survive better than some giants.”
Though she admits local retail sales are a “down a little” – a fate even national retailers haven’t escaped lately – she said she feels small businesses will always offer more bang for a customer’s buck.
“You get what you pay for,” says Flicker, who owns Down a Country Road in Hummelstown and is president of the Hummelstown Business and Professional Association (HBPA).
For instance, she said that cheaper candles bought at a chain store don’t compare to ones she shops at wholesale shows. There is, after all, a proper way for a candle to burn, Flicker pointed out, and that kind of education is something you just won’t find in a big box.
“(There) it’s just their job,” she added. “They couldn’t care less about the customer.
“Most of your small businesses go to wholesale shows and pick out things with clients in mind,” she said. “They look for uniqueness. You want something that’s not on a shelf where there’s 50 of them.”
But it’s not just product and service small businesses have in their favor through tough times, Flicker said. It’s also about the way small businesses work – and can work together. Through the kind of association HBPA represents, working together, she said, allows local businesses to share and refer customers and to view each other as ‘buddies’ instead of competition.
This coming weekend’s Hummels-town Holiday Happenings is one such way local retailers are working together to keep sales warmed up through the holidays. Banding together and drawing customers out and downtown is something HBPA does a lot of, Flicker said.
“Until you shout you’re never going to make the sale,” she said.
Of course, having to shout over the constant whir of big business takes its toll. “There are so many people who don’t know certain businesses exist,” Flicker said.
Hershey’s Briarcrest Shopping Village is home to another local co-op of retailers. “The Frog and the Toad” owner Pam Hastings said she does everything she can to find new customers.
“It’s very difficult this time and day to compete with the outlets,” she said while minding the register of her women’s boutique. “But I’m true to my local customers. You can’t beat that.”
