This is the second installment in Neighborhood Notes’ series on indie business collaboration through space sharing.
It doesn’t take a brilliant mind to realize that burritos and beers go together.
And many Portland purveyors of food and beverage have figured out ways to creatively share business spaces. Our first list of examples was concerned with those sharing due natural proximity and complementary offerings: There are the bars that allow cart food, the pizza makers that deliver to bars, and the Mexican restaurant that serves other bars and shares a bathroom with a strip joint.
But, another group of inventive Portlanders are thinking about complementary offerings in a different way, breeding strange and even more interesting bedfellows.
Have you ever considered how you could share your retail space with other businesses? Could you save considerably on your overhead, whether that’s rent, utilities or even employees?
And if you were to enter into such a situation, what kind of agreement should you have in place?
Let a few Portland business owners doing just this explain.
The Completely Shared Retail Space
The owners of three independently owned businesses—Salvage Works, Solabee Flowers and Boys' Fort—affectionately refer to their shared space as The Fort.
“Each business is an independent entity, but we share one retail space completely seamlessly. So, all three of our stuff is mixed in the room," says Alea Joy of Solabee Flowers.
And while those businesses include a seller or reclaimed and vintage building materials, a pair of floral designers, and a men’s retailer that supports a collective of more than 60 artists and craftspeople, "The ascetic is seamless,” Joy describes. “It works as a business model because essentially what we've created is a worker-owned collective. We kind of just stumbled into it.”
The owners of each individual business have known each other more than a year now and each has collaborated with the others in the past. All three came together because, "We were looking for a place to move, and we all really liked working together, and we all are dedicated to the neighborhood of Kenton," Joy explains.
Across town on NW 23rd Avenue, another pair of indie business—one an optical retailer that’s been locally owned for more than a century and the other a team of jewelry designers still in their nascent years—are also gracefully sharing a single retail space.
Touting “curated artisan attire,” The Specialty Store came into existence when Sticks & Stones Accessories and the long-standing eyewear professionals Reynolds Optical decided to collaborate, renaming and revamping the offerings of the once optical-only shop to include singular, high-quality items from around the world.
Sticks & Stones’ Art Director Marc Ishida says his company has always looked up to Reynolds because of its independence and longevity. “In my opinion, that's a pretty big milestone in this community to have an independently owned business that's been around that long," Ishida says.
Each business had a mutual appreciation for the other and saw an opportunity because Reynolds had plenty of extra room in its northwest location. The goal is “to offer something to Portland that you can't get anywhere else, which is why it's called Specialty Store—finding things you can't find anywhere else in Portland or even the West Coast for a lot of these brands,” Ishida explains.
Benefits of Setting Up Shop Together
Joy tells it like this: "One day Preston [Browning, owner of Salvage Works] just said, 'Hey, I have a hair-brained idea: What if we all start a shop together?'"
At that point, Boys' Fort was already designing a furniture collection with Salvage Works, which was constructing it, but the shared retail space was a new idea. The combination of the three has created what Joy calls a "home and garden complex" as both Solabee Flowers and Boys’ Fort rent part of Salvage Works' space.
“Almost everybody that works there owns the business," Joy says.
With six owners, this is hugely beneficial for all parties. "We will cover the shop for each other, which is great because there's no overhead as far as paying employees," Joy says.
“We also share all of our clients,” she adds. “Our clients are all kind of looking for similar things and our aesthetic is just really compatible. I explicitly trust both Boys' Fort and Salvage Works."
Trust and like-mindedness, not to mention the overhead saved in terms of employees, rent and utilities, are all extremely important aspects of The Fort’s shared space, but there’s something more intangible to their compatibility beyond the similar sense of style.
"It's just a really good idea house,” Joy says. “It's been just a goldmine creatively, because there's always someone there that's in an awesome mood and coming up with a new idea, or just pulled in a new client and that client wants all of our services and we can collaborate together on something."
"It's really increased all our business too because we have access to each others' clients,” and
"it's really fun to have a constant stream of customers come in" for many different reasons, she continues.
Sharing Space and Working Together
The physical space alongside Salvage Works is very important to both Solabee Flowers and Boys’ Fort, whose businesses were more event-based in the beginning, because "it's been really good for us to have a concrete place for people to come and stand" and see and understand what each business does, Joy explains.
For Sticks & Stones, a physical location was not only important to showcase its own “wearable art,” but it also provides “an experience for people to have a chance to try stuff that they can't normally see without going online," Ishida says.
As far as logistically cohabitating at The Specialty Store, there’s usually one Sticks & Stones associate in the store at all times to handle the clothing and jewelry and another Reynolds Optical employee to take care of that side of the business.
At The Fort, "We've got this intricate system of codes" and tags that indicates which products belong to which business "so people can just go up and do one transaction and be done, and we deal with the backend," Joy explains.
As it stands now, Salvage Works holds the lease on the space, and if the three parties decide to move forward with the relationship (and it appears that they will), Joy says they will formalize a few more things legally.
Being independent entities, each business is insured separately and does their own bookkeeping, Joy adds.
"There's definitely trust that has to go into having an agreement where you're sharing a very small space with two other businesses,” Joy says. “I really like and really trust the people that I work with. And I think it's mutual all around."
If considering sharing a space with another business, Joy also suggests that you "look at other businesses that are compatible with the services you offer, because that's really going to increase your revenue just because customers are going to come in and it's going to make more sense to them.”
In the case of The Fort, Salvage Works had the floor space and showroom but "what they got from us was" merchandising, staffing, help with rent, and an increased client base, Joy says.
She also says you must recognize that "there's always a certain amount of risk when you take up space with someone else, whether it be a roommate or a partner or another business."
"Keep the workplace really professional," Joy stresses. "When you're self-employed and you have your own space, you can have certain practices that aren't good for another businesses—like maybe you're really messy. Really, you have to dedicate yourself to constantly doing your best practices."
"It doesn't just affect you anymore, it affects other businesses and it affects their clients," she adds.
But in the end, it’s all about “strength in numbers,” Ishida says. “And in this economy with a lot of creative people that don't necessarily have an outlet to get their stuff out there, sometimes it's better to utilize [available] resources. It's not about stepping on people to get places; it's about building bridges to get where you all want to go at the same time."
Neighborhood Notes will spotlight more indie businesses that have interesting space sharing collaborations as this series continues. Until then, have you ever considered sharing space with another business? If so, what concerns would you have to address before committing to share your business’ space? Please share in the comments below.
