Paul Bowers
Inside the cramped quarters of Cat’s Music in Summerville, Johnny Cash reaches through the years on the in-store sound system as a motley assortment of customers peruses the CD selection. Officially licensed packages of Bob Marley incense line the back wall, and rap posters fill the front windows. Behind the sales counter, a small sign constructed from newspaper clippings and reminiscent of a ransom note tells a story in itself: “Save your local indie store, don’t shop at Best Buy.”
“Indie,” of course, indicates that Cat’s is an independent record shop, and the prospect of competing with Best Buy looms ominously in the future for its employees. The blue and yellow façade across the street in the Azalea Square shopping center indicates the beginning of construction on Summerville’s own upcoming media and electronics supercenter.
“We’re gonna die,” laments Kate Burns, a shift manager at Cat’s who has worked in the bohemian record store for about ten months. “This place is gonna fade out.”
While not everyone shares this doomsday vision for small businesses, there has been much talk in recent years about the competition between “mom and pop” stores and national chains for local market dominance. Companies are especially concerned about attracting a teenage target market and securing high school students’ increasingly large chunks of disposable income.
Summerville could be a case study in this business clash. It is a rapidly growing town where Main Street charm meets Interstate off-ramp clutter, and many of the town’s residents have watched apprehensively as the likes of Target, Kohl’s, and World Market set up shop in the vicinity of established local enterprises.
“It’s disheartening to see all the towns look the same—It’s really taking away a lot of the unique qualities,” says regular Cat’s customer Hank Holder. Hank, an eighteen-year-old with pink hair and tight jeans, is hardly a member of the town’s Old Guard, but he seems to understand the ramifications of the area’s expansion. During his years in attendance at Summerville High School, he was employed at Matt’s Burgers and Jeff Gordon’s Coffee & Fine Tea—two local businesses that, he asserts, met their demise with the respective arrivals of Perkins and Starbucks.
Hank has come to Cat’s to purchase CDs from the bands Pavement and The Black Keys, both of which can also be found at the Best Buy in North Charleston. While diehard supporters such as Hank claim that national chains cannot match the level of service and expertise found at Cat’s, Best Buy employee Jason Fickling begs to differ.
“I’m very knowledgeable about music, especially hip-hop,” he says. Some younger customers, such as Newberry College sophomore Jaime Ketten, seem to regard customer service as a non-issue.
“I either go to look around, or I know what I’m looking for, so that doesn’t matter that much,” he explains. And while stores like Cat’s tend to have a better selection of lesser-known artists, Jaime says that Best Buy now has “a good bit of selection, and it’s getting better,” citing the recent availability of Horse the Band’s new album as an example.
Like Millennium Music in downtown Charleston, Cat’s has a broad-ranging used CD section and a music exchange program, along with a hodgepodge of inexpensive vinyl records, which appeal to retro-styled or near-broke teenagers. Best Buy will probably never be able to compete in these areas. Also, Cat’s pushes for involvement in the community by selling local artists’ CDs and mix tapes. However, the harsh truth is that local music stores can rarely compete with the sheer low prices found at the national chains, where CDs often cost $2 to $5 less.
Another market in which the “big box” stores attempt to out-price local stores is athletic wear. In Mount Pleasant, locally owned specialty store Try Sports has stayed in business for just over three years, outlasting even the Athlete’s Foot that opened nearby and went out of business. Owner Jim Kirwan admits that his prices are sometimes higher than those found at volume sellers such as the Sports Authority, but he knows that customers are willing to pay the extra $10 dollars or so because “when you come in to Try Sports, you can expect a lot more than just the product you’re buying.” Kirwan and his employees conduct customer interviews and analyze videotapes of each customer running on a treadmill to determine the perfect shoe for a runner’s foot shape and mechanics. He adds that athletes “want to go into a store and feel that the people in the store want to help them get through the Cooper River Bridge Run.”
Joe Gandy, a senior distance runner on Bishop England’s track and field team, purchased a pair of Asics trainers and his racing spikes at Try Sports, and he says, “A lot of the runners in the area go there. You pretty much know them on a name basis.”
Other niche athletic stores, such as The Extra Mile running store in Charleston and Lloyd’s Soccer in Mount Pleasant, have stood the test of time against the likes of Dick’s Sporting Goods and The Athlete’s Foot. James Lobbestael, a sophomore on Summerville High School’s Junior Varsity soccer team, currently owns two pairs of Nike cleats from Lloyd’s and says of the store’s employees, “They all know the game pretty well; they all play in adult leagues and stuff. They try out the equipment or talk to people who have.”
At the cavernous Sports Authority in North Charleston, a slightly frustrated Daniel Roberts tries on soccer cleats without the assistance of a sales associate. Daniel is a senior at the Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics, visiting home for the weekend, and he is pressed for time to find a pair of Adidas Copa Mundial soccer cleats for his large foot size. He says that the customer service at the Sports Authority is practically nonexistent and that “Lloyd’s is much better in that respect,” but he already knows what he is looking for, and the Sports Authority is closer to his family’s home.
Daniel is somewhat hesitant to spend his money at chains such as the Sports Authority, especially after watching a 2003 documentary entitled “The Corporation” that psychoanalyzes the average American corporation as a human individual. According to the film, this person displays all the markings of a destructive and conscienceless psychopath. Daniel, like an increasing number of American teenagers, has begun to consider his purchases from a standpoint of moral and social responsibility. As Best Buy customer Jaime Ketten admits, “I shop guiltily.”
But is the greater “Walmartization” of America as inherently evil as its opponents claim it is? After all, any major business brings with it new employment opportunities wherever it expands. And cheaper goods mean improved quality of life in the surrounding area.
In the case of the national music store chain Guitar Center, few active musicians are morally opposed. The store’s North Charleston location features a store-length wall of electric guitars, separate rooms for drum sets and DJ equipment, and the music enthusiast’s equivalent of a kid-in-a-toy-store giddy atmosphere. Guitar Center’s unbeatably low prices are a boon for budding, young artists.
“People didn’t think they could get into a quality guitar for $100,” says General Manager Tony Garcia, raising his voice over the din of high-wattage amplifiers at the Rivers Avenue location. “We’re creating new musicians, which can’t be a bad thing.” The store is also involved in the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, and it sponsors local musician spotlights such as the recent King of the Blues competition.
It is difficult for teenage consumers to apply their typical anti-corporate vitriol to the apparently well-meaning Guitar Center. And with its knowledgeable sales staff (mostly consisting of gigging musicians) and an enormous in-store inventory, local instrument stores are scrambling to keep up.
“I never want to see somebody fail. I don’t measure my success by other people’s failure,” says Garcia, arguing that Guitar Center stores tend to create new customers rather than steal them from local businesses.
If Guitar Center is the epitome of honestly won chain dominance, then Summerville’s All Books & Co. is the archetypal small business success story. The bookstore, which has been a part of the town since 1990, has more quirky charm than an episode of Gilmore Girls, and owner Michelle List greets customers with a ready wit and no shortage of provocative conversation.
“Do they know who you are when you walk into Barnes & Noble?” she asks, polishing a coffee cup as a young girl sings absentmindedly in the next room. “Do they recognize your voice on the telephone?” List works to establish personal relationships with her customers, realizing that this is the best way for a small business like hers to compete against major national booksellers. She has hunted down rare hardbacks from the ‘70s for a slim profit margin, kept her shop open late to accommodate customers, and offered discounts to local English classes, all with the intent of building a loyal, personally acquainted customer base.
In the past, she has even allowed a group of high school students to organize local concerts in the store, rationalizing, “There was no place else for them to do it” and adding, “My mom didn’t like the music I listened to, either.”
In 2004, All Books participated in the Salvation Army Christmas program, which encourages customers to donate money to purchase books for disadvantaged children. However, a construction project in downtown Summerville led to a slow business season for the store, and List did not have enough money to purchase books for the remaining 120 children. It looked to be a bleak holiday season.
But the young show organizers came to her aid, pulling together local hardcore and metal bands for a blowout that raised more than enough money to purchase the remaining books.
Stories such as this one have cemented the store’s place in Summerville history, helping to generate what she calls the town’s “complexion.” She says, “If you move to a place because you like the complexion of the place, but you spend all of your money at Wal-Mart, it’s going to look the same as wherever you came from.” Today, locally owned stores such as Main Street Sampler and Pear Tree Toys are no longer in business, and List says the blame rests on the shoulders of local consumers.
When Summerville High School English I teacher Ebony Summers-Fogel needed her freshman students to acquire copies of the Shakespeare Made Easy edition of Romeo & Juliet, she called All Books ahead of time and secured a 15% discount for her students.
She prefers to shop at List’s small-town bookstore because “the service is much more personal.” Comparing All Books to national competitors, she says, “It’s not that the people at Barnes & Noble aren’t nice; it’s a different kind of nice. [At All Books] I feel more like a friend and less like a customer.”
Emily Upshur, a freshman at Northside Christian Academy, seems to be of an opposing opinion. Happily displaying two novels from the Chronicles of Prydain series, she explains that the North Charleston Barnes & Noble is generally her first stop for literary nourishment. She extols the store’s massive fantasy selection and explains that she often shops either there or at Books-A-Million because her friends give her gift cards to the stores.
In response to concerns about Barnes & Noble’s competitive practices, she says, “I’m a teenager. I don’t care about much of anything.”
She adds, “I just want one of them in Summerville.”