Shop Talk: Amid recession, GrassRoots looks for ‘untapped potential’

This is an installment of Shop Talk, an occasional series of interviews with business owners in Alaska, focusing on the state economy and how it is affecting them.

Walk into fair-trade store GrassRoots in Anchorage's Spenard neighborhood, and you might come across shop dog Kilo lounging among shelves of jewelry, housewares, clothes and other goods from dozens of countries. You might also hear Denali, the parrot, whistling away from the corner.

The shop almost entirely sells fair-trade items, made by disadvantaged producers in developing countries. Jill Dean — who previously worked as an attorney for 25 years — was long the sole proprietor, but she and her daughter Liz Dean became co-owners this year.

GrassRoots opened in 2008 in the Northern Lights Center strip mall. It moved across the street from the mall in March. The owners talked to the Anchorage Daily News about how they're faring in Alaska's recession.

[In a recession, Skinny Raven rethinks how to measure success]

How is the economy right now affecting you?

Jill: It's somewhat hard to say. With this move last March, we have good historical sales data pre-move. And at that point, our sales were still increasing. So whether they would have increased faster without a recession, maybe. But we were still increasing sales.

Liz: Previously, we were doing all right. … I feel like a part of that is we offer something that is unique and almost, I don't want to say recession-proof — nothing is — but sometimes people during a recession are looking for a way to spend more responsibly, consciously, and that is something that we offer.

Why did you move over to this side of Northern Lights Boulevard?

Jill: It was kind of an investment in our growth, would be a fair way to put it. We are now renting from a local landlord who has put a lot of effort into developing this section of Spenard, kind of expanding this into a hub over here. … We don't have the sales right now, quite honestly, that we had across the street. There's just not the foot traffic. And we knew that was going to happen. But it's developing and growing. … We're becoming a bit more focused, I think.

How have you had to adapt to this economy?

Liz: We have been focusing a lot more on inventory turnover, which goes hand-in-hand with having a smaller space. And listening to what people want.

Jill: It's probably made us pay more attention. We had no retail experience, so this has been a steep learning curve to start with, but this (recession) has probably made us — we're careful.

Makes you pay more attention and be more careful — how so?

Liz: Just running reports all the time for new products, being aware of social media, watching what people want and what they're following.

Jill: Probably the other thing that we're doing more of and we probably would have done it anyway, but maybe the recession has kind of pushed us there, is more outreach to the community, both with fundraising and partnerships but also just marketing.

Our theory is that there are a lot of people in this community that don't know we exist yet … that it is this untapped potential that we need to figure out how to tap into. I think maybe this has made us think about that more. We had so much foot traffic across the street, just by people wandering between shops. Now we have to actually make the effort to reach out and figure out how to tap into all these other people. … If you put it in perspective, I moved up here in the '80s. … We got through that, we got through '08, '09, we'll get through this. I guess I just have a lot of faith in Alaska, in Anchorage, in the people here.

[At Dollar Zone, business keeps growing during recession]

What are your general concerns in this economy, looking to the future?

Liz: There's so much happening in the world that everything seems like this huge unknown. But you can't just focus on that. You have to have hope that some of this is going to work out. What can you do other than keep going and hope for the best?

Jill: After 10 years, we have more experience in what's worked and hasn't worked, and do more of what worked. At one point we had a temporary store in the mall. I've tried some wholesaling, tried online. So we're focusing on what we do well, which is run a retail store with fair-trade products.