Small-town Minnesota stores find their niche

COLD SPRING, Minn.

In 2014, Lisa Hansen gave up her longtime job at an established business here and jumped full time into her passion: Little Sister's Antiques, her one-woman shop along First Street in the center of town.

Besides selling old wares in her white brick building, Hansen repurposes old furniture and makes rustic signs and jewelry. "I am very content doing business here," she said of her life in this town of 4,000. "But I work hard at it, too."

While not a tourist trap, Cold Spring has what retail experts and business owners say are key ingredients to successful rural retailing: proximity to lakes country (and its wealthy cabin owners); shops that sell specialized products not easily found in mainstream stores, and a network of civic support.

A stroll through town reveals a cluster of popular shops and stores.

Around the corner from the antique shop, the well-known Cold Spring Bakery lures sweet-toothed travelers off Hwy. 23. A few steps from the bakery, Trendsetters Boutique offers shoppers an eclectic array of purses, hats and other fashion accessories. Two blocks north, Third Street Brewhouse, a new brewpub attached to the historic Cold Spring brewery, plays host to community events and social hours.

The city also boasts an upscale grocer (which carries the bakery's goods), a movie theater and an expanded farm cooperative.

Situated about 15 miles southwest of St. Cloud, Cold Spring is in prime recreation country, tucked between the Horseshoe Chain of Lakes along the Sauk River, immediately to the south, and Garrison Keillor's famed Lake Wobegon country of lakes and hamlets, to the north.

While the community has a few large employers, including the Gold'n Plump Poultry processor and the stone manufacturer Coldspring, it retains some of the trappings of bedroom communities. Many of its residents work in St. Cloud, which has Wal-Mart, Target and the other mega-retailers that can suck consumers out of their own small towns.

Yet civic leaders say the retail sector in Cold Spring is as strong as it has been in two decades.

"Cold Spring has done a great job of hanging on to its customers," said Lisa Muenzhuber, who owns Trendsetters Boutique. "It's amazing how the town has been able to do that when St. Cloud and the big box stores are so close."

Kim Johnson, a retail merchandising professor at the University of Minnesota, said many small towns with thriving retail sectors have become "destinations" — places where people will spend a morning or an afternoon, knowing they can find good food, one-of-a-kind products and personable service, often in quaint settings.

In 2013, according to University Extension, Stearns County generated about $945 million in taxable retail sales — about three-quarters in the adjacent cities of St. Cloud and Waite Park and the rest in towns spread throughout the county.

Four years ago in New London, 30 miles southwest on Hwy. 23, Stacey Roberts and Gina Lieser opened the Happy Sol, a women's clothing boutique, after seeing a need for more women's clothing choices in Kandiyohi County. They have since added the Rugged Sun, a clothing line for men, to their business in the town of 1,300.

The clothing shops are part of a network of local businesses that meet monthly and put on six annual themed events, including this year's Ladies Night Out, held Oct. 15, which involved 15 local businesses and drew perhaps 400 women to the town.

Of the business connections, Lieser said: "We all have a good relationship and we work together, but it takes work."

Gregg Aamot, a longtime Minnesota journalist, is the author of "The New Minnesotans: Stories of Immigrants and Refugees." He teaches English at Ridgewater College.

Photos provided by MinnPost.