By Ben Nicholls<\/p>\n
For Hillcrest there has always been three legs to our street-level business community: dining, services and retail.\u00a0They\u2019re all very important because without them we don\u2019t have a balanced palate of services to offer our customers.<\/p>\n
Over the last decade, street-level retail in older business districts like Hillcrest has come under a lot of pressure.\u00a0This includes the rise of discount retailers (including those online and big-box stores in Mission Valley and beyond), rising rental rates in deteriorating buildings, and in Hillcrest (and Uptown), the perceived lack of parking.<\/p>\n
All these things make it difficult for some types of retail to compete with places like Mission Valley.\u00a0Online art-based stores, such as Etsy, even compete with unique products that were once the purview of neighborhood boutique retailers.<\/p>\n
How should a retailer compete in this environment?\u00a0It\u2019s difficult to compete with Walmart on price, the convenience of the Internet is unparalleled and parking is a long-term problem to solve.\u00a0While there are many things that brick-and-mortar businesses can do to diversify their revenue (such as having an online sales presence), the answer is something that the restaurant industry learnt a long time ago:\u00a0You must compete on the customer experience.<\/p>\n
Small retailers have the ability to engage with their customers in a way that the big-box stores, by definition, can\u2019t.\u00a0By creating a one-of-a-kind shopping experiences that can\u2019t be replicated anywhere else, small shopping locations can create a competitive edge.\u00a0Stores should always have knowledgeable and welcoming staff.\u00a0Though that\u2019s a given, many stores at \u201cthe mall\u201d can\u2019t boast even that.<\/p>\n
These experiences could be simple or elaborate.\u00a0Ideas could be simple such as creative window displays (think Hillcrest Ace Hardware) or well-designed lighting (think Cody\u2019s Home + Gift).\u00a0Ideas could be more creative, such as in-store sampling (think Vom Fass in the HUB).<\/p>\n
Other ideas that can be employed could include partnerships between a retail store and a nearby restaurant for a celebratory event during a sale or new product launch.\u00a0An interactive \u201cplay\u201d component with products might be good also.\u00a0A barber I go to provides a shot of whiskey to his last customers of the day.\u00a0While not technically legal (and I am not advocating anyone do it), it created an excellent customer experience that isn\u2019t easily replicated by Sport Clips.<\/p>\n
The Hillcrest Business Association has been working to create experience-based activities to promote retailers in Hillcrest.\u00a0Some of these activities will soon be upon us.\u00a0Hillcrest Taste \u2018n Tinis is a holiday shopping event on Dec. 10 that rewards customers by allowing them to (legally) sample holiday martinis in retail stores while shopping.\u00a0Shop Hillcrest for the Holidays \u2014 running Nov. 24 through Dec. 24 \u2014 is a shopping promotion that rewards frequent shoppers with a chance to win a Hillcrest shopping spree.\u00a0The more you shop the more chances you have to win.\u00a0HBA also participates in Small Business Saturday, which this year will be on Nov. 28.<\/p>\n
As retailers plan the holiday season, I encourage them to think about ways to make shopping an exciting experience that will have customers coming back again and again.<\/p>\n
\u2014Benjamin Nicholls is <\/em>el <\/em>executive director<\/em>\u00a0de El <\/em>Hillcrest Business Association.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Ben Nicholls For Hillcrest there has always been three legs to our street-level business community: dining, services and retail.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1404,"featured_media":249445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Editorial: How small business can compete with the mall","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11593,11552,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-no-images","category-opinion","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}