Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007
Leon Seltzer has owned and operated his vintage clothing store, Rerun, for more than 20 years, the last five of which he’s spent on Carroll Avenue in Old Town Takoma Park.
‘‘Those are the five best years of our existence,” he said Saturday, as his customers perused racks of original clothing from the ’60s and ’70s.
But only 20 percent of his customers, he estimates, are local residents.
‘‘Takoma Park residents don’t shop downtown,” he said. ‘‘They’re very proud of Old Town because we have no corporations, they applaud that there is only mom and pop stores in town, but they don’t shop locally.”
People from all over come to Takoma Park for its quirky, independently owned stores, which offer everything from organic pet food at the Big Bad Woof to rare and exotic instruments at the House of Musical Traditions.
But storeowners like Seltzer say they are worried that not enough of their clientele is made up of Takoma Park residents who decide to shop within the city, and so this holiday season, they’re joining with city government to promote a ‘‘Think Takoma — Buy Locally” campaign.
During this first week of December, Main Street Takoma, the Old Takoma Business Association and the Takoma Park City Council are encouraging city residents to support local storeowners and, in effect, their local economy.
‘‘In many ways, Takoma Park is a completely different experience,” said Roz Grigsby, OTBA’s executive director. ‘‘You don’t see chains ... [but] there are stores that have really interesting kinds of things that are perfect for a holiday gift.”
Bulent Ceylan, owner of The Covered Market on Carroll Avenue, estimates that about half of his customers are local.
‘‘Locals are always there,” he said. ‘‘Whenever they need a present, because we’re mostly gifts ... I also get people from out of town, too,” he said.
Ceylan’s store sells a variety of gifts, from furniture to jewelry. ‘‘Sometimes you have people coming in and just looking, getting a little idea for what to buy ... but they do come back. Most of them come back,” he said. ‘‘They spend at least 10 or 20 minutes. They have a lot of options.”
Besides a 2007 survey that asked residents to list the businesses in town they most often patronize, OTBA has no statistics that show a lack of local customers. But Grigsby said anecdotal evidence and occasional inventories taken by businesses have led vendors to believe many locals bypass the city’s shops.
The campaign’s goal, she said, is to make residents realize their shopping decisions can affect the community in which they live.
‘‘It’s really a question of living deliberately, to look at your shopping the way you look at your vote — that it has an impact,” Grisgby said.
‘‘This is a call to action in the holiday season,” Seltzer said. ‘‘Besides business, this is a philosophical issue. [Takoma Park residents] need to stand behind their ideals.”
That local philosophy, according to Michael Shuman, author of ‘‘Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age,” is simple: Local businesses strengthen local communities by giving more back.
‘‘When you invest in local businesses, they stick around, and you reap the benefits for a long time to come,” said Shuman, who has an office in Takoma Park. ‘‘... They tend to spend their own money locally, and this tends to be an extremely important fact when it comes to local development.”
In addition, Shuman said, ‘‘There is sociological evidence that communities with larger levels of local business have higher levels of socializing and quality of life.”
Grigsby says local stores can provide a personalized experience larger chains cannot. ‘‘The stores are always changing and evolving, and they’re responsive to what the customers say and request,” she said.
Part of the difficulty of raising awareness about Takoma Park’s businesses, Grigsby said, is their eclectic stock. ‘‘None of our stores fall into easy categorization,” she said. For example, there is no definitive bookstore in town, but there are several stores that sell books in addition to other items.
Grigsby admits that when it comes to Takoma Park, local stores might not be able to satisfy shoppers’ entire holiday needs.
‘‘There’s no electronic stuff — unless you went to CVS,” she said. And there are few stores that sell new clothes or men’s clothes, she said.
But Grigsby said the campaign should remind residents that city stores offer hard-to-find items.
‘‘You may find a wonderful present that’s going to be different,” she said. ‘‘If you want something you don’t want to see everyone else wearing, then you have to go some place that has original items.”
This past weekend, while walking out of Now & Then, a Laurel Avenue shop that calls itself ‘‘a purveyor of fine frivolities,” with shopping bags in their hands, William Hofman and Joseph Rosen, both 16, said they had just made several purchases of, in Hofman’s words, ‘‘stuff you will never need but absolutely do need.”
Among those purchases were an extendable fork, a mood ring and a headset for a phone that was, in fact, a phone itself.
The two Takoma Park residents said they like the quirky products local stores have to offer, as well as the personal touch; they had just been offered some free snacks at Now & Then.
Takoma Park resident Laura Illige, while window shopping with her visiting mother Sunday, said she plans to make most of her holiday gifts herself, but makes a point of shopping locally.
‘‘I buy food from the co-op; these shoes are from Amano,” she said, pointing to her feet.
Illige said she walks through Old Town every day on her way to the Metro station, and she appreciates the small-town feel the stores give the city.
Grigsby said that realization more than anything is what she and others are hoping to get out of the campaign.
‘‘We chose the first week of December because we wanted them to start here,” Grigsby said. ‘‘Buy local first, and then, if we can’t satisfy needs you have, go somewhere else.”
