Several store owners and managers are talking about the need to form a business association of some kind to work toward drawing more locals to shop downtown.
Wrangell residents are spending an increasing amount of their dollars online, ordering from Amazon and other remote merchants. About 10% of the borough’s sales tax collections last year came from online shoppers — and the number is growing.
Forming a downtown business association isn’t about competing with or abandoning the chamber of commerce, the store owners said.
The chamber serves a lot of different interests in town, not just retail merchants, said Marina Backman, owner of Made in Wrangell. “We all have a very focused and common interest,” she said of the retail business people who met Nov. 13.
A second meeting will be held sometime after Thanksgiving.
“It is very much in the preliminary stages,” Keeleigh Curley, co-owner of Midnight Oil, said of last week’s first organizational meeting.
Forming a group would be “a way for Front Street businesses to communicate with each other,” she said, such as better coordinating shop hours for late cruise ship arrivals and promoting more retail offerings for locals.
“We just need to educate Wrangell consumers that shopping in town, the money keeps circulating,” Curley said. “Spending in Wrangell is supporting each other’s families.”
She noted that unlike Ketchikan and Juneau, where many stores close down after the tourist season, Wrangell businesses stay open year-round.
The borough collected about $401,000 in sales taxes from online orders shipped into town in the fiscal year that ended June 30, representing more than $6 million in shopping dollars that left town.
The challenge to keeping more retail dollars in town is “mainly getting people down here on Front Street” and away from looking online first, Backman said. “It is very easy to sit in front of your computer.”
She acknowledges that part of the challenge will be stocking what people need. For example, she added some office supplies to her arts supplies and handmade items, starting with “the things I need and can’t get.” Backman said shoppers have been receptive to her new offerings when they come in look.
She opened Made in Wrangell a couple of years ago, moving from a small work space attached to an airport hangar into the Churchill Building on Front Street about nine months ago. In addition to design services and art supplies, she also sells custom-printed T-shirts and sweatshirts.
Scott and Keeleigh Curley opened up their new Front Street business in May, offering candy, custom clothing, décor items, balloons and more.
Keeleigh Curley said she catches herself looking at Amazon too, and reminds herself “we are one big family” as she considers her fellow business owners and what they offer — and how to get more people to shop locally.
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