WARREN, Ohio -- When she returned to the Mahoning Valley after living in Dallas for about a decade, Tamara Kromer saw the lack of shops for women's clothing accessories she had become accustomed to when she lived in Texas.
"I love accessories so I wanted to incorporate that into my everyday life and share it," she said.
Kromer is doing just that with the opening of Trendi Fashions. Kromer, who grew up in Warren and lives there now, opened her shop on Courthouse Square last week celebrated its grand opening with a Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber ribbon-cutting.
"It's a boutique for ladies to accessorize their everyday outfits, whether it be for proms, weddings -- I want them to know they are able to accessorize themselves," she explained.
Business has gone well so far, she reported. "Everybody that's come in has been wowed by it," she said. "They're not used to seeing the type of merchandise I have."
Kromer and Trendi Fashions join what Warren's new mayor, Doug Franklin, sees as a resurgence in excitement and activity on the square. That acivity includes Eastern Gateway Community College's downtown campus, the development of properties to house the Raymond John Wean Foundation and the Tech Belt Energy and Innovation Center, and National Fire & Water Repair's relocation there. Although several of those entities are nonprofits, their projects represent "an important investment to the totality of downtown business," the mayor said.
"What we're really excited about, though, is to add retail to that mix which creates the foot traffic and we believe it'll spur other business development," Franklin said. "We're taking an approach that we need to fill every storefront, one storefront at a time."
On hand for the Trendi Fashions' ribbon-cutting event, Franklin said hr wants to welcome new businesses and let them know City Hall is a phone call away. "Our job is to make sure that they're in an environment that helps them flourish and make money," he said. For downtown in particular, that means fighting what he sees as the perception that it isn't safe when, by statistics, it's one of the safest areas of the city. "We have to make sure that it stays safe and we let customers and business owners understand how safe it is downtown."
The owner of Howard's Clothes, a Courthouse Square staple since 1949, said business at the store is experiencing a "substantial pickup now"' and has increased since 2008. "We started increasing our advertising budget and those other stores were leaving. They were packing it in so there's no place for people to go," said Richard Lawnhurst, owner.
"We're doing very well," he said, acknowledging that foot traffic has increased. He also attributed increased business to a "cleanup of looks" he tied to the appearance of President Obama. "He dresses well," he said.
To stay in business, he said, "you have to work" and have the financial resources to withstand the dips and to properly stock a store "so when somebody comes in and wants a coat or a suit you have whatever they want and they're not going to go someplace else," he said.
Artistics Silk Screen & Design, located on Courthouse Square for about two and a half years, got its start in owner Tim Drummond's basement. A musician, Drummond made T-shirts for a band he was in "and it basically snowballed into this," he said.
"I really like it here," he said. The various downtown events "get a lot of people in front of the store here."
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.