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.
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