Western Avenue (Seattle, WA) merchants band together for marketing

With the economy sputtering, one might expect rival merchants along Seattle’s emerging furniture row to be jockeying against each other to claim their piece of a shrinking pie.

By Jake Batsell
Seattle Times business reporter

Instead, 20 stores on or near Western Avenue have banded together to promote the area as a home-furnishings district, forming the Western Avenue Merchants Association in a bid to lure more shoppers from Seattle and its suburbs.

"We are all still as competitive with each other as we were before," said Theresa Schneider, co-owner of McKinnon Furniture and the association’s president. "We simply want to increase the number of people we compete over."

Long an overlooked neighborhood sandwiched between the waterfront and downtown’s core, Western Avenue began to attract more furniture stores in the 1990s, offering more room at lower rents than downtown’s main retail core. The 1994 unveiling of Harbor Steps Park, which connects First and Western avenues at University Street, brought more pedestrian traffic to the area.

When business began to taper off in late 2000, Schneider said, store owners started talking about joining forces to tout the neighborhood as a home-furnishings hub. But it wasn’t until last summer that the merchants group got off the ground, creating a Web site and sending maps of the area to thousands of new homeowners and lifestyle-magazine subscribers.

"The fact that we needed to promote our uniqueness really came into focus," Schneider said. "There is no other place in the Seattle area that has the quality and quantity of home-furnishings stores."

The area is home to roughly three dozen such stores, mostly geared to the medium- to high-end shopper. Merchants are trying to emphasize the neighborhood’s high concentration of stores to counter suburbanite worries about finding a parking space.

Schneider said that while parking is easier to come by in the suburbs, furniture shoppers there have to drive from store to store in search of what they need. On Western Avenue, she said, "once you have parked, you’re done" — allowing customers to browse several stores without getting back in the car.

That kind of density appeals to David Holcomb, a Seattle inventor of kitchen gadgets who came to Western Avenue last week to look for a desk lamp and magazine rack for his office.

"I think it’s great," Holcomb said. "You don’t have to run all over the place. This is where I go to buy this stuff. I don’t want to yank myself all over the place."

Holcomb said Western Avenue’s enclave of home-furnishings stores reminded him of districts in Hong Kong or Frankfurt, which have neighborhoods dedicated to such niche industries as lighting and plumbing.

The association’s first map lists 13 member stores, but Schneider said seven more have joined, and another map is in the works. Dues range from $500 to $2,000, depending on the store’s annual sales.

Not all of the avenue’s merchants have signed up. Erika Clark, showroom manager for Diva, a contemporary furniture store, said she opted not to join because of time constraints and disagreements over the group’s marketing approach.

When the group was crafting its first print advertisement, Clark said, differences arose between merchants about whether to emphasize more traditional or contemporary decor. Clark said her store’s modern Italian designs are geared to a "specific lifestyle" that doesn’t come across in general advertisements.

Still, Clark said she considers the merchants’ association a worthwhile effort.

"It’s great to have unity down here," she said. "I think the idea behind it is great."

Indeed, merchants seem to agree that the association has brought a more collaborative feel to the street’s business community. Store owners say they’re more likely to refer people down the street if they don’t have the item a customer is looking for.

"Everybody seems to really work together," said Driscoll Robbins, whose eponymous store sells fine Oriental rugs. "They know that if we bring more people down here, it’s going to help everyone."

Jake Batsell: 206-464-2718 or [email protected]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134630630_western08.html