When Onikah Asamoa-Caesar added wine to the menu of her bookstore and coffee shop in July, it wasn’t just for fun. It was a strategic move to encourage even more folks — beyond readers and coffee drinkers — to gather at Fulton Street Books & Coffee in downtown Tulsa.
“It’s really about connection,” Asamoa-Caesar says. “I think everyone really wants to connect with other people and be somewhere where they feel safe, they feel seen and where they’re reflected in the space that they’re in. That’s what we try to offer at Fulton Street.”
But in a world of convenience provided by online shopping, brick and mortar businesses around the state have been tasked with the challenge of getting customers through their doors while also reaching them through digital platforms.
One way Asamoa-Caesar is doing that is partnering with online bookstores — like bookshop.org and libro.fm — which support local shops by sharing a percentage of the customer’s purchase.
“As a bookstore, one of the biggest competitors is Amazon when it comes to people getting their book shipped,” she says. “We’re able to offer just about any book anyone could want online shipped within three days directly to their home. Having that allows us just to reach customers that aren’t going to come downtown Tulsa and aren’t going to come into the store, but still want a book and want to support indie bookstores.”
Social media engagement is how Asamoa-Caesar drives both in person and online traffic, with a targeted presence on Instagram.
“We try to find ways to engage with our followers and I think we have about 16,000 now,” she says. “We post about books and we post about events. It’s a good way for us to just get the word out when new things are happening, like our wine launch.”
Main Street districts — concentrated areas of local business and commerce, often in historic areas of town — are dedicated to understanding the challenges and innovations faced by local shop owners as they compete with e-commerce.
The Paseo Arts District, located in Oklahoma City, is home to more than 20 art galleries, as well as restaurants, boutiques and entertainment venues. Executive director Amanda Bleakley says that supporting local artists is at the heart of her work.
“We support a community that is art-centric,” she says. “We are a retail space, but we’re also providing artists with training and development to better manage their own careers or show their work in other galleries. We write grants, have an incubator space that is open to the public and we also put on events that bring people to the area.”
The Paseo Arts District hosts a ‘First Friday’ Gallery Walk every first Friday of the month, rain or shine, from 6-9 p.m.
Broken Arrow’s Rose District — 10 square blocks of charming shops and restaurants accented by hundreds of colorful and fragrant rose bushes — is helping its merchants survive and thrive in the digital age through targeted social media messages that bring shoppers to an area that is an exciting and convenient outing.
“Each of our businesses is unique in their digital strategies,” says Brent Brassfield, the district’s business retention and development coordinator. “I think the ones who are most successful really define who their audience is and market to them on a regular basis. But it’s not just on the merchants — Rose District is also constantly promoting events and, for example, that we recently added 115 parking spaces because parking can be an issue that keeps people from coming to a downtown area. We want it to be easy, but you have to get the word out so they will come.”
