‘Time Is of the Essence’: Severed Ties on Cherry Street Launches E-Commerce Channel
Wooden fossil table at Severed Ties, from Bali, 43-by-23-by-22 inches ($3,200)
At Severed Ties, a wagon wheel coffee table, 59-by-42-by-20 inches. Teak wood finish. ($2,500).
All sizes of custom upholstery available at Severed Ties: Frames, sofas, love seats, chairs. This one with 8-way hand-tied frames, comfort down cushions, all don in a neutral fabric. ($2,900)
Purchased in England, a pair of Bidermiere chairs at Severed Ties, done in blue and white scalamandre fabric ($4,800 for the pair) and a brown and beige petrified wood side table ($2,200).
Severed Ties offers England-made birdcage pedestal tables, available in 40- to 60-inch round, custom size available, rectangular or round, distressed or not distressed mahogany or pine ($3,800 to $4,600).
A New Canaan business for 40 years, Severed Ties Antiques & Quality Consignments on Cherry Street carries some 10,000 individual items at any given time—many of those on-site, and otherwise fetch-able by truck for customers who want to “touch, see and feel” what they’re buying, according to owner Ginger Craft.
Ginger Craft (L) and Daria Sherman (R) of Severed Ties in the Cherry Street shop on a recent afternoon. Credit: Michael Dinan
Yet for Craft, that once essential shopping experience—touching, seeing and feeling a purchase—has taken a backseat for a new generation of consumers, for whom convenience and speed are higher priorities.
Weeks ago, just three years after launching a website of any kind, Craft opened up an ecommerce channel on Severed Ties—which now sells its high-end products directly through the website (packaging included).
“The young kids’ time is of the essence, so you don’t see as much walk-through traffic,” Craft said on a recent afternoon as a pair of first-time customers entered her brightly lit shop, a colorful and busy collection of furniture, jewelry, antiques, rugs, china, crystal, art, silver and accessories. “So we are trying to make it as convenient as possible.”
Opening up an online portion to her store also has allowed Craft to boost the reach of her inventory (“We’re trying to increase the volume by going online”), appealing to a wider range of buyer and by creating an Internet channel, meeting prospective customers where they are.
“We have had a Web presence in recent years, but we weren’t selling through the website. The younger generation, I feel, is more Web-savvy—they don’t go into shops as much and so we want to make our product available to everyone.”
Though it’s early, the signs are encouraging for Katz, who has already seen online sales and a boost in foot traffic in the store as a result of the website.
“People never knew about it before,” she said.
Dorothy Mann, owner of an eponymous women’s clothing and accessories shop on Elm Street, launched a new “S T Y L E D O T .” business online to complement and bolster what she calls an increasingly challenging time for traditional stores.
Created with the help of younger college students, the new online service asks visitors to fill out a profile that gathers up information about their fashion sense, eye and hair color, sizes, height, photos and includes questions such as “What are your best figure assets?” and “Which of your features do you not want to emphasize?”—then offers a “virtual stylist” who makes recommendations based on that profie.
The idea that she needed to do something new and innovative came to Mann on one of several snow days this past winter, when many shops downtown closed because roads were so bad.
In her research about the ways people shop now, Mann found that people no longer have the time or interest to “walk down streets and pop into little stores.”
“This whole only business is very, very, very important and people are becoming more and more comfortable working with it,” Mann told NewCanaanite.com.
The new service online is working, she said, as customers are building their profiles and it’s “rippling out further than our home base.”
“It has been very encouraging and people are excited about it,” Mann said. “I think they’re ready to make a move into the next evolution of retail—they’re comfortable tiptoeing and exploring.”
For big events and sales—for example, Saturday’s Sidewalk Sale downtown, which includes not just deals from local and area businesses, but also family-friendly activities—consumers overwhelmingly turn out for in-person experience, officials say.
Tucker Murphy, executive director of the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce, which organizes and operates the Sidewalk Sale, said she applauds businesses opening up online channels “for always being up to speed on shopping behavior.”
“But I also want to reinforce the ‘shop local’ message,” Murphy said. “As we have heard before, ‘Put your money where your house is.’ Supporting local stores via online channels or brick-and-mortar is much better than giving all our retail revenue to Amazon.”
Seth Berger, owner of Kids Home Furnishings on Main Street, said he’s had a website for his business (formerly the Baby & Toy Superstore of Stamford) since 1997, and has allowed customers to purchase directly from it since about 2007 “to add convenience for the shopper.”
Though Berger’s family-owned business since the 1940s has been built on personal interactions and relationships—to the point where generations of area families have bought their cribs and kids’ beds from his family—he said: “The technology-friendly consumer doesn’t feel they need that hands-on, personal interface.”
