Street Sense : Weekly Fair Helps Monrovia Merchants
David Gayman, 47, has owned the Valley Hardware and Variety Store since 1988 and is president of the Monrovia Old Town Merchants Assn. After a Home Depot outlet opened in the city, contributing to the demise of several small hardware stores, Gayman and some like-minded shop owners started a festival on Friday nights in 1992. The Family Festival is California’s largest weekly street fair, bringing 8,000 to 10,000 potential customers past Gayman’s front doors each week. He was interviewed by Karen E. Klein.
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I worked for many years in the ready-mix concrete business in the San Fernando Valley and only stumbled across the opportunity to buy this hardware store in October, 1988. A store like this has tremendous overhead and tremendous inventory. Before I bought it, I saw what it was going to take in sales to break even and I knew we could not do it.
But I had always had an interest in toy trains and trucks and so we decided to sell a good variety of model trains and toys. They make up about 40% of our total sales and take up about 20% of our floor space. I only wish the other part of our business did as well as the toys. Thank God there’s no Home Depot of train stores.
When the large “boxes,” like Home Depot or Wal-Mart, move into a town, they are extraordinarily difficult to compete against. They use predatory pricing to bring people in, they stock everything in the world, and they have a very high turnover of items.
In a small downtown area like we have in Monrovia, with a lot of mom-and-pop shops, there has to be a draw that will bring customers here, pure and simple. In 1992, the city had a farmer’s market that had been running on Friday afternoons for a couple of years. It had a certain charm to it, but the merchants were subsidizing it and the returns on it were not that great. You can’t be afraid to try something new, but at the same time you can’t be afraid to modify it when that’s necessary. So I was planning to recommend pulling the plug on the market.
But our city officials encouraged us to look at an alternative, a new street festival that had just started a few months earlier in San Dimas. We went down there on a hot, muggy summer night and there were thousands of people in their charming, downtown area. I looked around and said, “Boy, what’s not to love!”
Our goals for the festival were simple: We wanted it to be self-funding, because we could ill afford to subsidize it; we wanted it to bring people downtown who would not ordinarily come here, and we wanted to encourage the merchants to stay open and get people into their stores. We have met all those goals.
We have found, now that we’re in our fourth year, that people from all over come to the festival. More than half are from out of town. The 20-plus restaurants downtown see dramatic gains in their business on Friday nights. The retail stores see business pick up that night also, and they see return customers who first saw their merchandise at the festival and then come back to purchase something else.
A new Wal-Mart store is opening up a few blocks away in a couple of months and I expect to lose 10% to 20% of my business.
There’s no doubt that this is a break-even business, but I’m stubborn. I don’t want to leave, and my business partner Maria, who also happens to be my wife, is even more stubborn than I am. So for right now, we intend to stay here.
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LEARNING CURVE: VALLEY HARDWARE AND VARIETY STORE
On risk-taking in small business: . . .
“You can’t be afraid to try something new, but at the same time you can’t be afraid to modify it when that’s necessary.”
On how a small hardware store owner survives. . .
“This is a break-even business, but I’m stubborn. I don’t want to leave. . . . So for right now, we intend to stay here.”
On getting results . . .
“The festival has been a wonderful promotion that has really cost the merchants nothing. And it’s great for the city.”
AT A GLANCE
Company: Valley Hardware and Variety Store
Owners: David and Maria Gayman
Nature of business: Old-fashioned, service-oriented store selling everything from nuts and bolts and kitchen faucets to tools, toys, model trains, craft supplies and light bulbs
Location: Monrovia
Total business space: 9,000 square feet
Number of Employees: Two full-time, three part-time
Annual sales: $500,000
