How single-item stores survive in the age of big box

Button Button | BCBusiness

“The challenge of the retail business is the human condition,” Starbucks founder Howard Schulz once said. “We’re only as good as the moment, that fragile moment when we please or hopefully don’t disappoint the customer.” For the following four singular stories, niche retailers in an age of generalists, aiming to please has been the key to success

We live in an age of convenience, when one-stop shopping reigns supreme, from big-box department stores to Internet retail giants. And yes, stroll around Vancouver and you’ll come across a handful of businesses that seem like relics from the past: small specialty shops that remain staunchly independent and singularly focused. Think Gastown’s Button Button, the only all-button store in the country; North Vancouver’s Tea Time, which sells loose leaf teas and nothing else, not even a hot cup of Earl Grey; the Vancouver Pen Shop downtown, a fixture for pen lovers for 28 years; and Main Street’s All-Vacuum Store, still sucking up business after four decade.

How do they do it? Why are they still at it? And, more importantly, what can they teach us? Read on as a quartet of unique shop owners explains, in their own words, how they’re beating the odds to survive, and thrive, in the face of the superstore goliaths.