By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Five years ago Amy Craft Ahrens held a parking lot party, complete with goats, to celebrate 20 years of For Keeps.
On Saturday, Aug. 20, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., she’ll host another celebration in a tent behind the store at 144 S. Main in downtown Bowing Green this time with the ukuleles instead of goats, she said. The Grande Royale of the Black Swamp will play two sets from 1-2:15 p.m.
There will be giveaways, deals, and a $250 Prize Box. Keys will be given to purchasing customers until they run out. Customers should bring their key to the party to see if it fits the lock to the prize box.
Little could she have imagined in 2017 what the next five years had in store.
In the summers of 2018 and 2019, major construction work had the downtown torn apart, with the attendant dust, lack of parking, and “jackhammering, all day, every day.”
Foot traffic ceased. For Keeps fared better than other shops because it has parking directly behind the store.
Then in early 2020 with that behind her, Craft Ahrens told her assistant manager Augusta Anderson-Jeffer: “We should have a great summer. It should be great year.”
Three weeks later the shop was shuttered.
COVID-19 had reared its ugly spikes. A week before the state ordered businesses closed, she sent her employees home, and staffed the store herself. “I was just so nervous that someone would get sick.”
When the shutdown was in place with no certainty as to when it would end, she continue to come into the shop. “I wanted to make sure I could pay my staff. So I was in here every day selling via email, Facebook, my personal cell phone. My whole goal with that was to make enough to pay my staff all the way through, however long that went on. I didn’t want anyone worrying about paying their rent.”
And she wanted them to come back to work. Whenever that was possible.
“The unknown was the hardest thing,” she said. In March, she had just placed orders for Christmas. Now she questioned whether they would even be open. Shipping delays meant much of what was ordered didn’t show up, and what did came with hefty surcharges, some as high as 40 percent.
That merchandise was sold at cost.
For Keeps opened an online store for that Christmas because people were wary of coming into the shop. The online shop did well.
Customers were understanding – stores big and small were experiencing the same problems.
A year later, the online shop did a fraction of the business, Craft Ahrens said. “People wanted to be back in the store. They wanted to Christmas shop. They were so happy to shop again.”
Craft Ahrens wants shopping at For Keeps “to definitely be an experience.”
“We want people to come in and have a good time and enjoy their experience here.” So no matter what struggles the shop is facing she’s not going “to moan and groan to customers.”
What the customers will find is items source from hundreds of small and independent vendors. ““I’m always trying to find that thing you don’t find anywhere else,” she said
She stopped selling Yankee Candles when the company started placing its merchandise in big box stores.
What she seeks out are “smaller makers, independent brands, female-owned companies, minority-owned companies.”
That’s a personal decision by Craft Ahrens, but in talking to sales reps, it’s also a trend among other small shops.
Over the years, the mix of merchandise has changed. When she opened the shop in 1997, it was stocked with collectibles, including Beanie Babies. She’d seen how they sold in her previous job in Chicago and brought the idea back home with her.
Her father, Floyd Craft, was skeptical at first, but she convinced him. So both For Keeps and Ben Franklin carried them.
Sales of Beanie Babies helped her pay off her business loans early and gave her the financial foundation to weather the hard times that are part of being a retail operation.
That included the 2008-2013 recession. As bad as the pandemic was, that was the toughest period. If it had lasted a year longer, For Keeps would not have survived, she said.
“Even during a recession women will still want to feel good about themselves and that may be a $12 pair of earrings.” Or they might not be able to afford a new sofa, but a candle may brighten their home up.
But people don’t collect as they once did, so now she sells more fashions and accessories.
The shop also carries a full line of housewares as well as dip mixes and sauces.
A sales rep suggested she carry soap lifts. She scoffed at the idea, but was convinced. Now she’s constantly reordering them.
When possible, she brings Anderson-Jeffer with her to market to find stock. The assistant manager is in her 30s. “She’s younger. She’ll pick out things, I wouldn’t,” Craft Ahrens said. “It’s helpful to have another brain.”
As someone who started in retail at age 9 when her parents Floyd and Charlotte Craft, moved to BG to open Ben Franklin in 1976, she knows about the cyclical nature of the business. She embraces the vagaries of the trade. “
“That’s the best part of retail,” Craft Ahrens said. “You just don’t know. Every day is different. … When we come out with this craziness, I hope this trend of people wanting to support local continues.”
