The Little Soap Shop
Astoria, New York
"I should've called it the soap closet," Vivian Dritsas says wryly of her tiny, 200-square-foot shop in New York City's Astoria neighborhood.
When choosing her location, Dritsas avoided the main Ditmars Boulevard, where location brings a premium price. But she's close enough to the thoroughfare -- only 100 feet away -- to attract attention and customers.
Dritsas makes 32 bars of soap at a time in a work area, and uses shelf space as effectively as possible. She says the small-scale enterprise is what keeps her business sustainable: "If I'd been in a more expensive location, I wouldn't have survived the downturn."
But that doesn't mean she wants to stay small forever. "I'd love to expand or get another location," she says. "But we'd kill the name if we went too big, or we'd have to call the store the Biggest Little Soap Shop."
Why it works: "Small shops work much better with smaller merchandise," Allen says. While pocket-sized merchandise is easier to shoplift (requiring a business owner's watchful eye), a proprietor can squeeze more of it into a boutique.
Buyers enjoy supporting their community's fabric by shopping locally, Yarrow says, and they feel clever for finding high-quality but small-scale producers. If a business owner slips business cards into every purchase, "it becomes an inexpensive way to market your product and get it in front of people."
NEXT: Ephemeral shops in empty spaces
