Dunham’s: ‘We don’t do Black Friday madness’
In rural Pennsylvania, a family-owned department store caters to those who feel left behind by e-commerce or simply prefer to do their shopping at a slower pace. By Michael Corkery
The “33 hour” sale at Dunham’s Department Store begins the morning after Thanksgiving and lasts through Monday, when the local schools are closed for deer-hunting season.
There are no giant sales on flat-screen televisions or stockpiles of the hottest holiday toy. The big draw is the hot chocolate and the chance to win a $100 gift card.
Don’t expect internet deals, either. “Pardon our delay, but good things take time,” Dunham’s website apologises. “Our online store will be coming soon.”
Change comes slowly to Dunham’s, one of the few small family-owned department stores still operating in the United States. The store was founded in the early 1900s in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, a town of about 3,200 people surrounded by dairy farms, fracking fields and woods.
“We don’t do the Black Friday madness,’’ said Nancy Dunham, 75, who runs the store with her husband and two daughters. “We are trying to offer something different.”
At a time of rapid innovation, when giant retailers are competing on speed and convenience with features like twoday shipping and curbside pick-up, many department stores symbolise obsolescence and decline.
Yet Dunham’s, a store with a limited assortment of f urniture, housewares and clothing, often at higher prices, has managed to compete in its own way with Amazon.com and the Walmart supercenter, which is only 12 miles away and sells just about everything.
The Dunham family, now in its fourth generation as retailers, has created a niche with shoppers who feel left behind by e-commerce, or choose to opt out of it.
Dunham’s draws from a 50-mile radius in north central Pennsylvania, a region that is home to many older people who don’t typically shop online. Many regular customers do not have home computers, tablets or smartphones. The store also attracts tourists and retirees who have moved to the area.
Dunham’s occupies t hree adjoining buildings on Main Street of varying heights and design that reflect the store’s history, but also its continuity. The largest of the storefronts, a three-storey building constructed during the Great Depression, carries the family name chiseled into the concrete facade.
Dunham’s has tried to build its business around local needs and tastes.
In its early years, Dunham’s operated a “rolling store,” a truck that travelled to farms to sell sugar, clothing and candy, often bartering for maple syrup and buckwheat that they milled into pancake flour.
Back then, Wellsboro was a vibrant farming and manufacturing hub connected to big cities in the east by railroad. Corning Glass ran a factory that made light bulbs and employed more than 100 people.
During World War II, the glass plant started making Christmas ornaments when shipments of popular German decorations were banned from the United States.
The town considered the plant so important, residents said, that people used to take turns climbing to the top of a hotel roof to scout for German planes that might want to bomb it.
Those days are long gone. Dairy farming is struggling, and the glass factory has closed. The area, home to a natural mountain gorge billed as the “Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania,” attracts tourists during the warmer months, second homeowners and hunters. But the winter months are slow.
Fracking — the process of extracting natural oil and gas by shooting water and other fluids deep underground — has helped pump money into the economy. But workers in that industry tend to stay in town for a few weeks at a time and then go home to their families in other states.
The gas companies supply many of the workers with gear and clothing, which means they don’t usually shop at Dunham’s.
With no hope for a boom that could transform the local economy, the store takes small steps to try to stoke sales. When large retailers cut back on an older women’s clothing line, known for polyester pants with elastic waistbands and shortened cuffs, Dunham’s expanded its offerings.
“My customer, the little old lady, is being forgotten,” said Nancy Dunham’s daughter Ann Dunham Rawson. “Other companies don’t think that type clothing is much fun.”
The bankruptcies of national chains like Sears and Bon-Ton are driving traffic to Dunham’s, too. But the demise of those large stores also means fewer suppliers of affordable clothing, which makes it harder for Dunham’s to locate product.
Dunham’s employs as many as 50 people during the busier months, many of them part time. The store hires mostly older workers who want to supplement their Social Security income.
Nancy Dunham said it would be difficult for a younger person with a family to live on the store’s starting hourly wage of $7.25, which is Pennsylvania’s minimum.
Dunham said the store cannot afford to compete with large retailers on wages and benefits. “We are at the bottom of the pay scale.”
While the Dunhams watch the industry warily, they aren’t swayed by what everyone else is doing. They still have no deadline for starting online sales.
“I hope people want to keep interacting with each other in brick-and-mortar stores,” Nancy Dunham said. “It’s one way we learn from one another. It frightens me to think of a world without it.