Influx of affluent retirees and weekenders changes business prospects here, as does impact of Internet
Second in a series of articles on small business in Rappahannock County
By James P. Gannon
In 2000, Cheri and Martin Woodard opened Long View Gallery in the old historic house on Sperryville’s Main Street that was the original home of their earlier business, Faith Mountain Company, which had grown from a tiny retailer of herbs into a major mail-order catalog retailer.
Instead of selling relatively inexpensive items as they had done with Faith Mountain, the couple would be offering original art works that were priced from a few hundred to sometimes thousands of dollars. Some locals were skeptical about the idea of selling pricey art in a little village in rural Rappahannock County. Main Street in Sperryville is hardly Fifth Avenue in Manhattan or Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, after all, but the Woodards were convinced that changing demographics in the county would make it a viable place for selling quality art.
“It wasn’t actually so ridiculous as it might have sounded,” Cheri Woodard told a gathering of small business owners this week. “We thought the weekender phenomenon–the people coming out here–would be very supportive” of an art gallery. “It turned out to be a good enterprise,” which the Woodards since have sold to Suzanne Zylonis and Andrew Haley, who are carrying on Long View Gallery with success.
The key to the success of the art gallery, Woodard told The Rappahannock Voice business forum Tuesday, was the changing demographic profile of Rappahannock County. “You couldn’t have done that ten years ago,” Woodard said. “But if you look at the charts, the demographics of this county have changed very rapidly.”
A rising influx of older, more affluent people who are purchasing properties in the county–many of them from the Washington Metro area and retired or nearing retirement–plus the waves of free-spending weekenders who have second homes here or who come to dinner at The Inn at Little Washington, provides a steady flow of people ready to buy expensive things like art, jewelry and quality gifts.
Now that she is a Realtor selling properties to these people, Woodard is even more convinced of the trend. “The group of people moving out here are pretty darn wealthy, and have the wherewithal to buy art and eat expensive dinners and pay expensive prices for real estate. There is a way to capitalize on that group,” she told the three-dozen business people gathered for the forum.
Changing demographics and the increasing importance of the Internet as a business tool were two of the major themes that emerged from the two-hour discussion. Businesses that find a way to capitalize on the two trends can be successful here. Woodard cited the success of R.H. Ballard, an art, rug and home accessories retailer which has a retail shop on Main Street in Washington and sells such things as expensive French table linens and oriental rugs via the Internet to customers everywhere.
The impact of demographic changes and the Internet isn’t always benign, in the view of Pam Owen, who owns Fly By Night Books in Flint Hill. The aging of Rappahannock’s population is a negative factor for selling used books, she said.
“Things have changed dramatically for me in my business,” said Owen. “It started to grow, and it did fine for about a year and a half. Then, a couple things happened, including rising gas prices, which didn’t help because I rely on a lot of tourist traffic. The other thing is demographic.
“We are getting old in this county. Young people are not moving to this county. When people get in their eighties, they are not buying books, they are trying to get rid of their books. I have more people coming into the shop trying to sell me books, or even giving them to me, than I have people coming to take things out.”
She thinks business that provide services to older residents work well in this county, but “retail is very problematic.” She said also that, based on talking to other antiquarian book dealers, that “the book business took a huge downturn, especially in the last two years.” Book buyers are increasingly turning to the Internet to buy books, rather than going to book shops. “Now it is the Internet, or die. There is a very good likelihood that I cannot keep the store going,” because of these trends, Owen said.
Sherri Fickel, who with her husband operates Hopkins Ordinary, a bed & breakfast inn that they created in what was Sperryville’s old historic hotel on Main Street, is another who thinks demographic trends are dictating what will work as a business here.
“The people who are coming out here are well-heeled,” and will spend nights in B&Bs, go to restaurants and buy expensive gifts, she said. But Rappahannock doesn’t have the local population or the amount of tourist traffic to support retail businesses that sell low-priced items, in her view.
“You have to change what you are marketing,” Fickel said. “Selling apples for five-cents each isn’t going to make anyone any money because we don’t have enough people, but selling a $700 painting will make money. It means focusing on lower volume and higher-dollar things.”
To read the first article in this series, click here.
-- James P. Gannon
Write a comment