Red, blue and polka-dotted cloth diapers sweep
across the window of Emily Murray's new store,
No Pins Required, like
streamers. The walls, once dark orange and tan, were repainted lavender,
pink, and blue and a children's play area built in the back to occupy
the store's chief concern: babies, and their bottoms.
Murray
officially opened her store Saturday, April 10 with a ribbon cutting;
but parents curious about ditching their disposable diaper habit didn't
have to trek down to the Woodward Ave. location to see it. The Ferndale Downtown Development
Authority (DDA) posted pictures of the event for their nearly 3,000 fans
on
Facebook. The opening of the Downtown Ferndale Bike Shop the same
day was also posted, including photos of shop owner Jon Hughes'
grandfather, the man that inspired a love of cycling.
The posts
are chummy and personal, something a friend would upload to celebrate
the accomplishment of a store opening, a business started. And, in part,
that's the point. The
Ferndale DDA in March
launched its Downtown Ferndale IGNITE program, which aims to build an
online community of entrepreneurs that it hopes will soon transition to
real-world businesses opening in downtown Ferndale.
"It's about
becoming closer to people and forming relationships," says Joe Venuto,
founder of social media management firm
SoPlat and a DDA volunteer who is
spearheading the Ignite effort. "There's no substitute for personal
interaction, ever. Social media is simply a tool to bridge the gap
that's ever present with people now. We want to find them where they are
and bring them to where they need to be."
For Venuto and the
DDA, that place is Ferndale. Wedged between Detroit and Royal Oak on one
of the metro area's main strips -- Woodward Ave. -- Ferndale is urban,
eclectic, and less costly than its neighbors. The mix has drawn a
mash-up of artists, hip, quirky retail spots, eco-enthusiasts and a
range of bars and restaurants. But now, Ferndale business leaders say, they're ready to
leverage the community zeitgeist to draw more entrepreneurs to the city.
"One
thing we've heard from customers and business owners is that they
really love the character of the downtown," says DDA Executive Director
and CEO Cristina Sheppard-Decius. "We're making sure we're embracing
that. ... Entrepreneurs have always been our basis, but it's even
stronger now with the economy. We're trying to capitalize on that."
"Ignite
is really there to bring entrepreneurs out of the woodwork,"
Sheppard-Decius says, "and hopefully engage them to create their
business in downtown Ferndale."
Jim Calleja is just such an
entrepreneur. Following a more than two decades career in the food
industry, Calleja switched careers and March 9 opened Queen's Dreams, a retail outlet
for what its website describes as "drag queens, t-girls, and women of
all kinds."
"This community is very open-minded," Calleja says,
and actively interested in supporting downtown businesses. Within days
of his opening, he says, residents were helping to spread the word by
voluntarily passing out flyers for the shop.
"There's only two other shops like mine in the state," he
says. "One in Wyandotte and one in Marine City. I had an overwhelming
response opening day. It was nonstop until 8 p.m."
Murray had the
same experience. "We live in Ferndale, but even if we didn't, it's the
perfect place for our store," she explains. "Eighty-five percent of our
online buyers were local. Ferndale is very green. It's the right type of
community for us."
Ten other businesses have recently opened in
downtown Ferndale, including No Pins Required and the
Downtown
Ferndale Bike Shop, Designer Resale, Green Thumb Garden Center,
Rockin Soul, and Petit Fleur. But the city is also attracting marketing
and advertising firms such as
Griot Editorial, a post-production
division for audio-visual production powerhouse Grace & Wild;
advertising house
Driven Solutions; and
Venuto's own SoPlat.
It's an evolution for what DDA Marketing
Director Chris Hughes calls a "creative incubator."
"You come
here and you're inspired," she boasts. "You don't see the same old, same
old every day. If you're in the creative business, you always have to
be looking to what's happening, what's new. For sure you can see that in
downtown Ferndale."
It's a long way from the downtown of a
decade ago, Sheppard-Decius said. Downtown Ferndale's aging buildings
had a 30 percent vacancy rate and had grown shabby and worn from
neglect. Parking wasn't available and the streets weren't friendly to
pedestrians.
"Businesses didn't even have their front doors open
because no one could park and walk in," she recalls.
The
creation of the DDA kicked off a brick-by-brick building of incentive
structures, design rules, and marketing that started to draw retailers, restaurants and bars, and eventually, residents.
Restoring the original character of the buildings and getting the
business community involved in the heavy lifting quickly led to first
successes. Five years after the initial effort, Sheppard-Decius said,
downtown Ferndale's vacancy rate was a scant one percent.
The
vacancy rate has since edged up to six percent, largely because of
recessionary times, she explains. But Ferndale is pounding the virtual
and real-world pavement to take its downtown to the next level.
"One
of our goals is to increase the in-kind economy of downtown," she says.
"We need more people working within downtown that will take advantage
of retail and restaurants that are here. It improves the bottom line for
everybody."
Ferndale, of course, isn't alone; and competition
for new business is stiff. But then again, not every place can claim the
diverse, progressive, and techno-savvy community of Ferndale. Plenty of
downtown authorities across the nation have tried to use social media
to draw a crowd, says Paul Felt, editor of the
Downtown Idea Exchange
and
Downtown Promotion Reporter.
But "like any other tool it can be innovatively used or poorly used and
implemented," he explains.
Royal Oak's promotion of its
zombie walk
drew 4,000 people, largely because of online promotion, Felt says.
Cheyenne, Wyoming's creation of its country-singing mascot "
Boots
Walker," on the other hand, has only drawn about 190 Facebook fans.
For perspective, aglets, or the plastic thing at the end of shoelaces,
to date have drawn about
1,700
fans.
Beyond "fan" growth, Ferndale's DDA is working to
package services from local businesses to make start-ups in Ferndale an
easier prospect, and is featuring monthly networking sessions to meet
prospective business owners face to face.
Ignite's first meeting
on March 30 at Rosie O'Grady's drew about 25 people from the metro area,
Venuto says; many of them Facebook fans.
"With the Ignite
program, we want to make sure we don't lose sight of the fact that we
were born again on entrepreneurs," Sheppard-Decius adds. "We want to
embrace that and make sure that lives on."
Michelle
Martinez is a freelance writer and editor who
has
reported on
Metro Detroit businesses and issues for five years. Her previous article
was Hacking
Metro Detroit.