Northridge : Retailer Honored for Pluck, Tenacity

The award easily could have been for tenacity, pluck and earthquake survival skills.

But Laura D’Angelo of the Northridge Kids at Heart gift store accepted her award Thursday for the San Fernando Valley retailer of the year, as awarded by Anne McGilvary & Co., a gift wares distributor.

Same difference.

D’Angelo’s gift and rubber stamp store is just a block from the demolished Northridge Meadows Apartments and sustained considerable damage itself, but remained open as other shops moved or closed.

“It’s been really hard because we had a loss of product and fixtures,” D’Angelo said of her shop in the Northridge Garden Center on Reseda Boulevard. “The [shopping] center is more than half empty . . . and we moved three times in less than a year.”

Then there was the reopening of Northridge Fashion Center, which drew away customers, and aesthetic repairs to the strip mall itself, which made the remaining businesses appear closed even when they weren’t.

“Business has been horrible,” D’Angelo said, mentioning the 20% drop in sales since the earthquake. But the scaffolding is down and new businesses are moving into the plaza. As D’Angelo and her staff prepare to celebrate the store’s fifth birthday, things can only get better, she said.

“I think they chose me because I’m such a good survivor,” D’Angelo said.