Discussions of downtown Ann Arbor's business mix often paint a picture of retail versus restaurants, but in recent years a distinct third category has risen to become a significant player: service businesses.
Hair salons. Yoga studios. Fitness centers. They don't focus on selling physical products and they're certainly not serving up food, but over the past decade they've become increasingly prevalent downtown.
"Many people who've been living in the city for a long time remember barbershops and maybe a couple of salons," says Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority executive director Susan Pollay. "Now the shift, if you take a look, is there's so many. There are colorists and salons that do makeup and hair. There's just such a greater number and a wider array of them."
For an example, look no further than the immediate area that Imagine
Three Beauty Studio moved into on Liberty last November. Imagine Three co-owner Julie Hill points out that there are five other service businesses within the square block she moved into: Studio 44 Hair Design, Salon XL Color and Design Group, Bodies In Balance, Metamorphosis Hair Salon and Dessange Paris. And yet she says the location has worked "very, very well" because there's plenty of business to go around.
Main Street Area Association executive director Maura Thomson says much of that business is coming from the growing number of downtown residents.
"We've all read or heard about how people are gravitating towards downtowns," Thomson says. "It just makes sense that if your population is increasing in a downtown, you're naturally going to see more of these service-type businesses."
Think Local First executive director Chris Good says the increased diversity of businesses is also yet another incentive for people who don't already live or work downtown to make the trip.
"A lot of those businesses are really a part of people's everyday life," Good says. "It's just having that synergy of business downtown that's drawing people down there. People come down, get a haircut, go to the yoga studio, then they're going to go to the coffee shop or go to the restaurant afterward."
Another likely factor in the rise of service businesses, particularly in a notoriously pricey area like downtown Ann Arbor, is the lower barrier to entry. Most service businesses don't require investing a lot of money in inventory or expensive equipment. Pollay says the service business model makes it easier for new entrepreneurs to come forward in downtown with fresh vision.
"It's exciting to see some real creatives shaping these businesses, very personal businesses," she says. "That to me is one of the exciting parts to it. You don't need to become a giant whatever to go into business. You can go into business, be a small business, and get a foothold and really get a strong customer base in downtown."
Case in point:
Vie Fitness and Spa, which opened downtown in 2004. Owner Heather Dupuis says she'd always worked in gyms prior to opening Vie, but she disagreed with some of the ways big-box gyms did business. Dupuis wanted to tweak the practice of forcing all customers to pay the same membership fee for use of an entire facility regardless of what services and equipment they were actually using. So she developed Vie as an "a la carte boutique." The business offers a wide range of fitness and beauty-related services including personal training, a variety of exercise classes, massage, spa treatments and a juice bar.
So far Dupuis' formula has experienced remarkable success. Her business has grown consistently year over year, prompting the opening of a second location last year in the Arbor Hills shopping center, and she's angling to eventually buy the building that houses Vie's downtown location. Dupuis attributes much of her success to her decision to start her business downtown.
"I actually lost my first round of investors because they didn't think downtown would work and they thought parking was an issue," she says. "I was pretty much either going to do it downtown or go home to Canada…To me Vie is about downtown. That's what makes it special, I think."
Pollay says the most important service a business like Vie offers is also the most intangible: "fostering a sense of connectivity." She notes that Vie encourages customers to use its facility as a gathering place, whether socializing before, during or after a class or spa session.
Hill says community engagement has also been key in getting Imagine Three off the ground, although her brand of it goes beyond the doors of her business. She and her partners have offered a "Look Good, Feel Better" class at the
Cancer Support Community and are participating in
GetDowntown's Commuter Challenge.
"I think that's most important for us, to be involved with the community and get connected with the community," Hill says. "We think this place is kind of like our home, so we're inviting people into our house."
Increasingly, that service mentality has also become key for some of downtown's retailers as well.
Literati Bookstore owner Hilary Gustafson says she wanted to spotlight book clubs, panel discussions, author events and other community gatherings at her business from the start.
"They're really integral to how we do our business," Gustafson says. "We came in here obviously wanting to be a bookstore, but also a community-focused bookstore and one that served the community in ways other than just selling books."
Thomson says an "interactive" approach has been vital for businesses like Literati and
Vault of Midnight, and is likely to become increasingly important to many other downtown retailers.
"In this day and age of being able to purchase anything you want without leaving your home, I think it's their only way to survive," she says. "I really do."
Pollay notes the major changes downtown has undergone since she moved to the area in the early ‘80s, when downtown was still home to the Eaton automotive manufacturing plant. She says the growth of service businesses and the rise of a community-service mentality in traditional retailers are just the latest step in downtown's long-term development.
"Constant evolution is the strength of downtown," she says. "Buildings that were once office are now residential. Places where people once had storage, it's now interesting retail up on the second floor. The evolution of downtown is what I think we're speaking to and I think it's going to continue to change."
Patrick Dunn is an Ann Arbor-based freelance writer and a senior writer at Concentrate and Metromode.
All photos by Doug Coombe .
You like us but have you LIKED us? Our Facebook page is here so show us a little like. OR follow us on Twitter @ConcentrateA2