Rural Retail..

Author: Anya Harris, Art Materials Retailer

When you’ve been in business for 37 years, you’ve just about seen it all – gas shortages, recessions, the deaths of good customers. That’s why Jay and Joan Zwynenburg, owners of Jay’s Art Shop and Frame Gallery in Bennington, Vermont, remain optimistic about their business, even in the midst of a global recession.

“It is the balance of gifts and cards, art supplies, the gallery and the custom framing we offer that has sustained us,” said Jay. “The diversification has allowed us to weather economic conditions better than we would have if we were dependent on only one type of market. After a flat-to-poor January through April this year, May picked up and I’m optimistic we’re going to come through this current situation just fine.”

In fact, his art supply business has increased each year since they opened. “That’s the good news,” he said. “We keep pouring the additional money we’re making into inventory. The distributors and reps who call us say that we’re the largest art supply store in the state of Vermont.”

How Jay’s came to be

With a bachelor’s degree in engineering, an MBA, and another master’s in sales and marketing management, Jay escaped the rat race of the corporate world in 1972 and settled with his family in bucolic Bennington, a college town of about 20,000 nestled in the picturesque Green Mountains of southwestern Vermont. He purchased the Bennington Bookshop, which carried books and a small selection of art materials and office supplies. Jay and his wife Joan carried out a gradual series of expansions, broadening their selection of art supplies and introducing custom framing. During the ’70s and ’80s, they relocated and spun off a series of stores, including a 3,000-square foot office products center with an outside sales force. That was before Staples, Office Depot or Office Max.

By the late 80s, Jay and Joan owned a total of seven stores. Since then, they’ve sold five, including – to their son – a high-volume Hallmark store. They retained Jay’s Art Shop and their Cards and Gifts store and, in 1987, combined the two in a 20,000-square-foot building they purchased in downtown Bennington. Besides an eclectic mix of products, shoppers will also find a small gallery on the second-floor mezzanine and the frame shop on the first.

“Custom framing has been important to our business because the dollar amount on one framing job is quite significant compared to selling one greeting card or small gift item,” said Jay. “In some cases, it can be hundreds of dollars, which helps us to stay on top of invoices and bills. It’s very good for cash flow.”

Don’t put all your advertising efforts in one basket

Thanks to his education and background, Jay remains very much aware of the need to elevate the profile of his business. To that end, he uses a mix of TV, print and radio ads.

Generating the most feedback for the store are spots on cable TV, which Jay has been running for nearly 14 years. “We were among the pioneers in this area,” he said. “We started back in 1995 when it was still quite inexpensive. We’ve created 36 30-second ads, and I’m in a lot of them, pitching the store myself.”

Jay runs print ads in several regional papers, and some 60-second spots on the local AM radio station “because the price is quite reasonable.” He is a big proponent of the Web and believes a good website is a must for anyone marketing a new business.

“But I wouldn’t try to beat the online discounters at their own game,” he warns. The store offers a 10 percent discount to repeat customers and to frame customers who bring in more than one job at a time.

Jay’s Art Shop launched a redesigned website, www.jaysartshop.com, last fall to highlights its role as the local AM store. “We get orders through the website, but we see its main purpose as driving people to our building. Before the redesign, it really did very little for our business, but now I can see its effectiveness as a marketing tool,” Jay said.

The website was crucial in saving his custom wedding invitation business. “When I noticed that our orders were diminishing, it occurred to me that people must be ordering them online, instead of going into a shop and flipping through a big cumbersome book, like we offered,” Jay explained. “That’s when I contacted Birchcraft, our stationer, and we put the selection on our website. Since people can sit in the comfort of their homes to pick out their wedding invitations, sales have increased.”

Nearby are two small colleges, Bennington and Southern Vermont, but the Bennington students buy the bulk of their supplies at their on-campus bookstore. Still, one-third of Jay’s business is selling art materials to hobbyists and more serious artists. One third of the business is custom framing, and the other third is in cards and gifts.

In addition to advertising, Jay and Joan remain very involved in civic groups and special community events. The networking keeps their store top-of-mind for people in the area and “helps elevate the profile of the business,” noted Jay. He has served on the board of the downtown improvement organization, Better Bennington Corporation, for 12 years, and he and Joan are involved in both Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce.

Keep those customers coming

The Zwynenburgs watched and responded as their original markets evolved over the years. “Business has changed significantly since we started,” said Jay. “People shopped downtown; there weren’t shopping malls. Today, we have several mega malls just a short drive away. They have put a sizeable dent in our business, which was especially true when they were new. We weathered that storm because we have a fairly loyal customer base. But we’re gradually losing customers who were middle-aged when we started. Many of them are now quite elderly, and we see a few more pass on every week. They aren’t easily replaced.”

Luckily, Bennington continues to grow as a tourist destination, especially in the summer and fall, and people love to visit Jay’s. “Not to brag, but visitors – especially those who are here for the first time – often tell us what a beautiful store it is.”

The building dates back to 1860 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It features original woodwork throughout and a grand staircase leading from the retail floor to the gallery. Special care is taken to maintain it, and they must follow historic preservation guidelines. For instance, since the building pre-dates electricity, windows are large to let in a lot of light. When the Zwynenburgs wanted to install storm windows to make the store more energy efficient, rules stated they had to be installed on the building’s interior.

Philosophically speaking

Despite the stability of his business, Jay grew up during the Great Depression and is carefully watching the store’s numbers. “We run a pretty lean machine all the time, but we’ll try to tighten that belt just one more notch,” Jay told us. Staff is kept to a minimum anyway – three full-time employees and one part-time – and Jay’s “reverse pyramid” management philosophy helps them be as successful as possible to improve sales.

“I am not averse to hard work,” he said, though he doesn’t consider his time at the store as work. “It’s a great place to come to keep busy and I enjoy being here.

“We’ve been through a lot of rough times, like the gas shortages of 1973 and 1978, when people couldn’t even get gas, never mind the price,” he concluded. “We also made it through the stagflation and inflation of the ’70s and ’80s, when the prime interest rate went up to nearly 22 percent – if you borrowed, you had to pay 2 percent above prime! We’ve weathered recessions before and even though none were like this one, we will weather this one, too.”

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