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Cindy Harris: We are one of the few people who can say business is good. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're in a very popular part of town, NoDa, of course, the arts district. We have our gallery crawls, which keep the people coming down. To make sure that we did find success during this down time, we really turned to social marketing. We established ourselves on Facebook and Twitter, and we're pretty active in those arenas. I think that's the difference in the changes that we've made. We're very happy this year.
453 E. 36th St.
704-332-0142
Amber Crest Custom Winery, a retail winery that offers wine education
Mark Adams: We have had many parts of our business that are way up and some that are not. So we are actually in the process right now of really trying to take the business in more of a virtual direction. We're going to introduce a new Web site called Really Fun Wine Show that will be more of a Web TV show about the education of wine. We're trying to expand beyond our initial four walls here. We're in the beginning of our third year. The first year we were having double-digit monthly increases up until about seven or eight months ago; we were growing quite a bit and now's it's somewhat leveled off. We have months where we're up and some when we're down. Over the second year we were down slightly.
9623-L E Independence Blvd., Matthews
704-708-9463
Black & Blue, a men's and women's denim shop
Cheryl Little: Business is challenging. One month it seems like things are starting to get back to normal and the next month sales will drop again. However, since Black & Blue was not around when the times were extremely good, we had an easier transition of adjusting our inventory levels and expectations compared to other stores. Our biggest challenge was opening during the beginning of a significant recession combined with a storefront that ended up not having the visibility we expected ... but we are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to move to another space at Morrison that will provide more visibility and exposure. Look for the new store to open late August/early September.
720 Governor Morrison St. # 180
704-366-9339
LuLu, a bistro-style eatery
Marc Jacksina: In a good economy, it's never busy enough as far as from an owner's point of view. But being a realist, knowing what's going on out there and seeing what's going on in it, Charlotte seems pretty insulated from it, particularly in my industry. The number of restaurants that have closed is pretty minimal compared to Dallas, San Francisco, New York -- particularly larger markets. I was actually surprised how insulated we've been. By inauguration, I expected that we would have a larger number of closings and I'm surprised at the number of closings that were corporate rather than small business. But in hindsight not really because corporate can afford to close a restaurant, where small businesses, it's not our luxury to close. This is a dollar and a dream, and if you close up you don't have a dollar, all you've got is a dream.
All said and done, my business is down percentage-wise and the number of people we have come in the door, but I think the way that we handle costs ... at the end of the week we're still paying the bills and still making it through. Being in our fourth full year of business, this is supposed to be the big push year so this has almost felt like we've been knocked back about a year and a half. The third year is always kind of a struggle year; once you get through, you make your adjustments. We've been fairly lucky; we adjusted early. We adjusted last April before things started to come up. September and October of last year were probably the ugliest in the industry period, as far as costs being up, gas prices being up, so we got the double whammy, and then the triple whammy with customers not being able to go out, so that was surprising. I think between that and offering a prix fixe menu, which has been a saving grace for us because Charlotte is not an early dinner town. Our lunches have been decent; we've never been a big lunch restaurant, but prices are pretty fair so you still manage to maintain the amount of people coming in less than a year ago. Because we adjusted the menu for it, it still balances out. I think we're all feeling the pinch ... everybody's worried about the health care bill and how it's going to affect us. But what I've got to worry about is what comes in tonight and how we handle it."
