Store Names That Say "Don't Shop Here"

It's prime shopping season, and my fair city is in a world of hurt. The weekend before last I attended a town meeting convened by my city councilwoman at which a consultant delivered the depressing news that Oakland is losing $1 billion a year in potential retail sales to neighboring cities. (In the trade, that's known as "leakage.")

Once upon a time, downtown Oakland was home to four major department stores, a big furniture store, and several swanky boutiques. The tide began turning in the 1980s, thanks to lackluster leadership, rising crime, and general cluelessness. The Loma Prieta earthquake, in 1989, delivered the coup de grâce. Some downtown structures were never repaired and remain vacant. Today Oakland, a city of about 400,000, has only one department store: Sears. To shop at Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, Home Depot, Target, or Pottery Barn, Oaklanders must travel to Emeryville (pop.: 6,882), Albany (pop.: 16,444), Walnut Creek (pop.: 64,583), or, of course, San Francisco.

What to do, what to do? Well, this holiday season the Oakland Merchants Leadership Forum has issued a "savings passport" to encourage residents to "celebrate what makes Oakland unique" ("Who wants to live in Generica?") and to "shop Oakland." I'm all for that, but when I picked up my passport today I was not inspired to go on a spending spree, or even a spreelet.

Why? Because the stores participating in the promotion give a depressingly small-time, washed-up impression of Oakland. Nail shops. A Christian bookstore. A karate school. Jewelry stores with identical cheesy "diamond" logos. Chiropractors. Lots of taquerias. In other words: Generica.

As for the names of those businesses ... oh dear. Here are a few that would have made me laugh if they hadn't made me gnash my teeth:

Love Stop Florist 

What is this -- a flower shop that kills the love? Does it specialize in "I Want a Divorce" bouquets?

Casketorium

Just what you want in your hour of pre-need: a peppy-sounding funeral-supply business. (I do wish I'd known about it when I wrote about necro-branding.)

Cuisine Restaurant

Here's a branding tip: translating a generic word like "food" into French does not make it non-generic.

My all-time so-bad-it's-good Oakland business name isn't in the booklet. It is, however, right in my neighborhood:

Talk about generic! Admittedly, there's something crazily pure about the unbrandedness of it all, not to mention the modesty of that indefinite article. I sometimes wonder whether there used to be a whole alphabet of laundromats, A through Z, and this is the sole survivor. Something seems to be working: it's been there the entire 20 years I've lived here. Maybe longer. Maybe forever. Maybe it is, in fact, the ur-laundromat, the one the anthropologists will be studying.

Read an earlier lament about Oakland business names.

Or look on the bright side at Oakland Goods, which shares the news about all the positive retail developments here (and there are a few).

Comments

[GoingLikeSixty]

Oh these downtowns associations thinking they can stop leakage. It's absurd. I bet everydown town has tried the same lame loyalty card approach.

There is a long term demographic shift from downtowns for a myriad of reasons, none of which are economically addressable.

My favorite:
Badcock Furniture
(happens to be furniture but ANY business with Badcock associated to it, is not good.)

[Nancy Friedman]

Going Like Sixty: Actually, the Oakland promotion is for neighborhoods, not downtown. Everyone seems to have pretty much given up on downtown, although at least one local blogger is fighting the good fight: http://thedto.wordpress.com/

[Orange]

I love Badcock Furniture! I've never been there, but there's one near my in-laws'. It's right down the road from Mama's Kuntry Kafe. (I have photographic evidence of both: http://orangetangerine.blogspot.com/2007/09/most-inadvertently-lewd-town-on-earth.html) These businesses are crying out for a name mashup.

[evvance]

I totally agree with your comments. Unfortunately, it's usually the less successful shops (or more naive storeowners) who think that this kind of promotion will help their business.

When it comes to food and shopping, I'm definitely a locavore -- I avoid the "name brand" stores. And
I thought I'd provide a list of Oakland businesses that I patronize, all with clever names --

About Face (facials, massage, waxing)
Article Pract (yarn - www.articlepract.com/name.html)
Bakesale Betty (famous for the fried chicken sandwich, with ironing boards for tables, as well as "Betty" in a bright blue wig - www.bakesalebetty.com)
Big Bear Burgers (with an allusion to the Cal Bears)
Diesel Books (diesel.booksense.com)
Green Acres (gardening services)
In Full Swing (clothing for full-figured women)
La Calaca Loca ("The Crazy Skeleton" -- taqueria)
Optimum Pilates (www.optimumpilates.com)
Sagrada (books and objects with spiritual themes - www.sagrada.com)
See Jane Run (sporting goods for women - www.seejanerun.com)
Vino! (wait for it...wine - www.vino.com)

[evvance]

Oops! I forgot

Someone's in the Kitchen (cookware)

[bonsmots]

My all-time favorite is the "plus-size" women's store called Ample Duds. Translation: Big Losers. What WERE they thinking?!

[Nancy Friedman]

EV Vance: Love your list. I find Article Pract a bit too cold and opaque, especially for a business that caters to the craft community (all those hard consonant sounds!), but I do admire the fact that it's an intentional anagram of "Practical Art."

There used to be a shop on Piedmont Ave. called Don't Eat the Furniture! When it opened, it carried home accessories AND pet stuff. The owner's dog was frequently to be seen in the shop window, sleeping on a big four-poster bed. Quirky? Absolutely. But kind of brilliant, too.

[Dave Blake]

Article Prat was certainly inspired by Practical Art, but wasn't quite an anagram. It'd have to be Practical Ert.

My favorite Oakland store name will always be Linoleum Dicks (yep, no apostrophe), on the north edge of downtown on the east side of San Pablo until some 20 years ago. I also loved it when the large blazing red neon sign atop the huge Bekins Storage (you saw it from highway 24 looking west a couple of blocks around the 27th st. exit, now it's something else) lost a section of its all caps letters about a decade ago and read
BEKINS
RAGE
straight out of a '70s Japanese monster movie.

[evvance]

"Article Pract" may not be immediately intelligible, but it is totally memorable (at least to me!).

Loved Dave Blake's contributions, too. I suppose the "lost letter" syndrome could be another column for you, Nancy....