Downtown divas: Center-city clothiers make a splash

Though Cathey Brown, owner of Downtown Ms. Brown’s, Shannon Merced, owner of Shae Belle, Ashley Ramsdell, owner of Prima Donna, and Meghan Stack, owner of Staxx, all declined to disclose revenues, all said that their downtown stores are doing better than expected.

Three businesses – Downtown Ms. Brown’s, Shae Belle and Prima Donna – opened less than a year ago. Each is expected to meet or exceed their first year projections.

Stack’s store has been open since March 2004. Her first-year revenues, she said, were nearly triple her projections.

Not all months are good, though.

Brown said that the store’s first winter was a little lean. “January and February, we started cutting back on the hours we stayed open.”

“I had projected sales in the summer to slow down,” added Ramsdell. “But people in the downtown area are … saying that probably won’t be the case,” Ramsdell said.

Downtown clientele

Clientele seems to be an influence on each store’s success. Each store sells clothing that ranges from casual to dressy, and the owners all recommend the other stores to their client base.

But the individual stores also serve their own unique niches.

Brown described her clothing as “kind of Bohemian,” and said her customers range from 12 years old to 60, though most customers are in middle school and high school. Some clothing and accessories are geared toward men.

Brown does some marketing to reach her customers – including passing out flyers at this year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade – but she attributes a lot of Downtown Ms. Brown’s foot traffic to its highly visible location on the corner of Walnut and South.

Merced said her store only carries women’s apparel and accessories, and she tries to keep the price range under $200. She initially projected shoppers to be between 20 and 45 years old, but has since discovered that her “bread and butter” lies within the 30- to 50-year old market.

Prima Donna tends to attract customers that used to travel outside of Springfield to shop, especially for designer names, Ramsdell said. The majority of her customers are between 30 and 40 years old.

Stack, whose store carries men’s clothing and accessories as well as women’s items, said her clients tend to be a little older than the college crowd she initially expected to attract. Stack markets her store through a variety of promotions, including biannual fashion shows and customer appreciation nights.

The stores’ downtown locations also enjoy the benefit of increased foot traffic from center city events such as parades, pub crawls and the monthly First Friday Art Walk.

“Art Walk is amazing,” Merced said. Shae Belle serves wine and sees a lot of foot traffic during the event, she added.

Ramsdell uses live models in her storefront on first Fridays and the Saturday afternoons after the Springfield Cardinals games. Downtown Ms. Brown’s also has used models during First Friday Art Walk evenings.

Parking and competition

The general consensus is that parking, something each woman expected to be a challenge when they were planning to open their stores, is not keeping the customers away.

“Parking was my absolute main concern,” Stack said. She chose a location that offered plenty of street parking as well as an adjacent lot. “In any other city, parking is just not overflowing. That’s what makes it a downtown, that you get out, you park your car, and you’re there for a while,” she added.

And each new store adds another reason for shoppers to make a day of the downtown experience, making competition a nonissue. The four boutique owners said they have excellent relationships with each other and the rest of the downtown business owners.

“It’s like being in a shopping mall – you don’t want to be the only store in the mall,” Ramsdell said.

John Simmons at Urban Districts Alliance said downtown has definitely seen more foot traffic. “We have seen the female apparel market re-emerge,” he said.

Simmons said that more retail is likely to follow a natural progression: stores that specialize in areas that attract the women already shopping downtown, such as home décor and men’s apparel.