On the day Ben Glushein opened Port MA, his new Main Street clothing store, he received a small potted cactus. The cactus came from the home goods store Kestrel on Masonic Street, owned and run by Eliza Jane Bradley, where it was bought by Kristin Kelly, the owner of Ode Boutique on Main Street, and brought to Glushein as a housewarming gift.
“We both sell clothing, so I figured he wouldn’t want clothing as a gift,” Kelly says. “I thought a plant was nice. It really takes a while to get settled into a new space, so I thought it’d be nice to give him something that can grow.”
Even in a good economic climate, one out of three small businesses opening nationally will close after two years of operations, and half will close after five years, according to a 2012 report from the Small Business Administration. It’s easy to forget, as we hurry along the colorful blur of a commercial street, that each new sign going up on or coming down from a storefront’s door tells a personal story of hope and investment.
Established Northampton business owners like Patty Arbour (Artisan Gallery), Judith Fine (Gazebo), and Cathy Cross (Cathy Cross Fashion) have always relied on support from colleagues and friends. “We were incubators for each other’s ideas,” remembers Fine, who opened her shop in the new Thornes Marketplace 36 years ago. “We were all young and green, so talking with each other was exceedingly helpful.”
For the owners of Port MA, Kestrel, and Ode—each under the age of 40 with no prior experience running businesses—it’s a model for how to help each other survive in a harsh environment.
Glushein is only one month in, and he is still collecting evidence that his idea for Port MA will work. For Bradley, Kestrel’s two-year anniversary in October will mark another step toward ongoing stability. And Ode’s four-year anniversary in August has reminded Kelly that her role now goes beyond that of the new kid on the block.
“It’s hard,” remembers Kelly. “It’s so, so hard to get it all going.”
Ben Glushein, 36—lanky, casually dressed, with roving eyes—spends his free minutes at Port MA stepping from table to table, adjusting displays and tidying how the shirts and dresses fall on their hangers. The space is bright and open, full of clothing in bold colors.
“Northampton’s a unique mix of people,” he says. “I’ve gotten a decent amount of interest in the past few weeks.”
Glushein, who grew up in Springfield and now lives in East Longmeadow, has wanted to open a store for 10 years. He calls this clothing “user-friendly.” It’s comfortable, informal, and occasionally unisex: light dresses, T-shirts, hooded shirts, henleys.
The challenge for some shoppers is the higher price point at Port MA—a result, Glushein explains, of stocking a third of his store with American-made products.
“A guy stopped in the other day and was put off by the price of a polo shirt,” Glushein says. “I told him that it’s priced higher because it’s made with American labor by a company that pays a living wage. But, you know, people want a shopping experience, not a lecture on this stuff.”
Lecturer or no, Glushein has modeled his business on the idea that buying American-made clothing has civic value. “Food is getting more expensive over time, and people still buy four-dollar coffees every morning. But when it comes to clothing, most people haven’t adjusted to the idea of purchasing anything more than the cheapest option.”
Glushein doesn’t want to price anyone out. “I want everyone who comes in to be able to get something. But there are lots of people in this town who are politically outspoken about fair labor, and if those people put their money where their mouths are, businesses like this will do well. So that’s my challenge to them.”
The late-summer season has been quiet, and Glushein hopes the return of Smith students will bring some added interest in the store. For now, he’s taking to heart the supportive words he’s getting from established business owners in town.
“Every conversation I’m having right now is informative,” he says, explaining that visits from Bradley at Kestrel and from Kelly at Ode have calmed his thinking a bit regarding the next few months. “They seem really cool. It’s good to make all these connections. And they don’t just feel like business connections. It feels like we’re all in the same boat. But it’s a scary boat. It rocks, and you’re always hoping it doesn’t sink.”
When asked about her Port MA visit, Eliza Jane Bradley, 38, steps out from behind the counter at Kestrel to show off her orange shoes. “I got these at Ben’s place. Aren’t they cute?”
Bradley rocks a summery version of the punk look, with a floral arm tattoo, nose ring, and short dyed-blonde hair. You might not tag her as the owner of a modern home goods store with a garden twist—until you get a sense of the warmth she exudes.
“I don’t know Ben very well yet, but he’s really friendly and his store looks great. It has a nice feel in there,” she says. “I look forward to getting to know him better. I really like what he’s doing.”
Bradley grew up in Amherst and worked at Roz’s Place in Northampton as a teenager. She moved to Boulder when she was 20, then on to San Francisco to study fashion design at the Art Institute. “But in the back of my mind,” she says, “I always wanted a store, and I always envisioned it here. Northampton has such a nice energy about it.”
Like Glushein, Bradley had no prior experience running a business. “I had a friend out in San Francisco who opened a store, so I got to see how that process worked. And she and I took an intensive business course together that was geared toward women. That’s where I learned how to do things like write good business plans.”
When Bradley moved back to the Valley she sought out a few local mentors—namely Nancy Cowen, who owns the gift shop Happy Valley, and Cathy Cross. “Having those conversations was hugely important when I was doing research and starting out. I showed them my concept and my product mix, and they were open with me about numbers and business questions I had on foot traffic, sales forecasts, things like that.”
Bradley was Glushein’s age when she opened Kestrel in 2012. The store hasn’t changed much since then, she says. “But deciding on what it was going to be in the first place definitely took time. I pieced together contacts for handmade goods I admired, I went out and met artists and vendors locally and nationally, and I mapped out my vision from there.”
Kristin Kelly and the staff at Ode have been greatly supportive too, Bradley adds. “Kristin’s been a mentor to me in a big way. I call her with questions. She’s a good neighbor. We have a similar aesthetic. We share customers. It’s great.”
With all the store owners leading busy work lives, it can be difficult for them to spend outside time together. “I’ve been so glued to the store over the past couple of years. But I have a couple of helpers now, which is good. I’m actually freeing myself up a bit.”
But even given some occasional time to get away, Bradley doesn’t plan on wandering too far from her still-young enterprise. “Starting a business… It’s all about not knowing what’s going to happen. I’m still getting used to that. You put everything into it—your whole self. And it’s a risk. It’s a very personal risk.”
Bradley is working at getting away, but Kristin Kelly is having the opposite problem during her interview at Ode—the video baby monitor in her hand keeps compelling her upstairs to check on her daughter, five-month-old Marlowe Striebel. Eventually she comes down, baby in arm.
“I named Marlowe after the drug dealer on The Wire,” she explains. It takes a moment to realize she’s kidding. Kelly, 34—a willowy Kansas native with a wide smile—speaks with a quiet, calm wit. She has a staff of four, who seem to love her. She lives with her husband and Marlowe in an apartment directly above the store. The arrangement works out nicely.
“We did well here early on,” she explains. “We opened in the summer of 2010, at the tail end of the 2008 bust. It was just far enough after, I guess, because people were feeling more confident about shopping. But to get into a groove here and really feel confident about the future of the store? That took a few years.”
That’s partly why she brought Glushein a cactus, Kelly explains. “I just remember the first day that I opened. I was sweating bullets. But a lot of store owners came in and said hi and made a purchase. It was really important to me—and to them—that I feel welcome.”
The fact that Glushein’s is also a clothing store is almost irrelevant, she says. “There’s no point in feeding any sort of competitive vibe. The more new, vibrant businesses we have opening up in Northampton, the more reason people have to come out shopping, and even make a day trip or a weekend trip to the area.”
Kelly, too, has no business background. “I just really wanted to open a boutique. So it took a while to figure it out.”
If Port MA’s touchstone is American manufacture and Kestrel’s is handmade goods, what’s Ode’s?
“Art, of all kinds,” says Kelly, who has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. “Ode gives five percent of profits to a different local nonprofit each month. And from the month we opened we’ve been committed to participating in Arts Night Out.”
That event, which falls on the second Friday of every month, brings businesses and art spaces into sync for an evening of visual and performing arts exhibits throughout Northampton.
“It’s important to me that I work in a place that incorporates art and brings in community artists,” Kelly says. “We always have art on our walls, but we’ve also hosted dances, poetry readings, musicians, fashion shows… That’s very important to us.”
So what advice to give? “I just asked a lot of questions, and I put myself out there and followed people around at trade shows for a while. I completely winged it. And for the first year I was really disorganized with my bookkeeping and accounting. It was a lot of trial and error.
“But I had confidence in the feel of the store. For me, that meant art on the walls and a really great staff. But it means something different for everybody.”
Kelly has nothing but good things to say about Glushein and Bradley. “It’s funny… People who grew up in this area tend to come back. Like Ben and Eliza. I hear that a lot. This seems like a good place for 30-somethings.”
Can the generations between Main Street business owners be felt, on a day-to-day basis? Definitely, says Kelly. “People like Cathy Cross, Judith Fine, Patty Arbour… They’re a distinct force. You can feel their presence, in the way they’re established in the community. They’re people who everybody knows. And then there are the newcomers, who hopefully will use them as good examples.”
But Kelly’s not a newcomer—not after four years of long hours and hard work.
“I have some real experience now. It’s nice to feel like I’m no longer the youngest one on the block. I only got that feeling recently—I don’t think of Ode as a new business anymore.”•
