Not child's play: Suwie Waweru, owner of Capital Kidzwear, a children's clothing store, discusses the joys and challenges of being a small business owner.
Before opening a kids’ clothing store, Suwie Waweru did her homework.
After the events of September 11, she knew she wanted to leave Manhattan and start a business in the Capital District. Albany’s charter school boom prompted her to decide to open a children’s clothing store, specializing in urban wear and school uniforms.
Unlike other business owners, who might have chosen children’s clothing because they loved it or because they themselves had children, this Pace University-educated MBA recognized a niche market and set about filling it.
Now, she owns Capital Kidzwear, a children’s clothing boutique on upper Washington that specializes in hot brands and formalwear. According to the store slogan, the store carries “clothes kids wanna wear,” including name brands like Rocawear, Timberland, Puma, and Pelle Pelle, as well as shoes, boots, and outerwear. The store also carries a full range of formalwear for boys and girls, including little boys’ tuxedos and christening clothing.
Waweru, who is always monitoring the market, has also begun specializing in boys clothing, noting that most other children’s clothing stores have larger girls sections. “That’s a way for a small business like ours to gain a little bit of an advantage,” she says.
Small businesses like hers need every advantage they can get these days, she says. “Policymakers think of small businesses as being much larger than ours,” she says. “We’re even smaller, more like a micro-business.”
Waweru and her husband run the business, and handle most of the day-to-day operations in the store as well as the mail-order side of the business. In the six years that they have owned the business, they have learned to relinquish certain tasks, including SEO for the store’s website and marketing and advertising initiatives. “I’ve found as a small business owner, you have to learn to delegate,” she says.
She’s also gotten support from the Retail Council of New York State, a member association that provides credit card processing services and health insurance and other discounted benefits for retailers.
Capital Kidzwear is located on the first floor of a brownstone on the block of Washington that overlooks Townsend Park. Located on the edge of Center Square, it’s a part of the city that’s been historically known for difficulties with vagrants and graffiti, but these days, with more community policing and the addition of some environmental deterrents, these problems have all but been removed, Waweru says.
More businesses have also come to the area, another sign of progress. With the recent addition of Subway, Taco Del Mar, and the new Trustco Bank on the corner, the area is now almost fully occupied—and why not? With its handsome brownstones and Flatiron-style building overlooking Townsend Park, the neighborhood is more reminiscent of lower Manhattan than Albany, and perhaps that’s why Waweru fell in love with it. She and her husband own the building and make their home in the apartment above the store. On weekday mornings, Waweru is able to dash over to the Albany Public Library’s Main Branch to bring her toddler to lapsit and she likes to take her to Washington Park, too.
The diversity on nearby Central Avenue should be seen as something positive, she says. “People shouldn’t be afraid of people who aren’t like them coming in and opening businesses. Most people are just the same as you. They’re trying to make a buck and raise a family,” she says.
She urges the community to communicate with these businesses and to open a dialogue with them. “There’s a lot of good smart people on Central. They’re from different places, but that doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “They should tap them, and ask them questions. They’d be surprised.”
In the six years she’s been in business here, Waweru herself has learned a great deal. As a business owner, you have to be prepared to make mistakes and to learn from them, she says. Her website, with its online shopping capabilities, was one of them, she says. The website has not provided the ROI she expected, she says. “It has not lived up to its potential,” she says simply.
But she has also built some valuable relationships, based on her ability to respond to her customer’s needs. Waweru prides herself on going the extra mile when it comes to customer service, providing value adds like measuring shoe sizes for kids, special orders, and competitive pricing. (If you find a lower price on the same product somewhere else, she’ll beat it by 5 percent, she says.) It’s this dialogue with the customers that makes small businesses special, she says.
“That’s what local means. I know the kids. I know their parents. I’m not a chain that advertises customer service. We give customer service,” she says. “We have to.”
(In the weeks leading up to Small Business Saturday [November 24], we’ve begun a weekly feature on this blog called Small Business Saturday. In it, we’ll profile some of the small business that make their homes in the heart of Albany’s uptown. We’ll highlight retail establishments, as well as restaurants and service businesses, and discuss the joys and challenges that confront small business owners on today’s changing Main Streets. Want to support small businesses like these? Visit Capital District Local First for an online directory of local and independent businesses.
