La Conner’s turnaround
How a group of merchants rallied to bring the tourists back to town

by R.W. Clever

Around this time last year the visitor count was running thin in La Conner, Skagit County's leading tourist town. There was less ka-ching to the cash registers of the upscale boutiques along First Avenue.

From her shop right near the corner of First and Morris, Cathy Wyman could see and feel the difference over the previous year, when the regional and national economies were still on a roll.

“The streets were empty,” recalled Linda Cole, of the Amenities shop, Wyman’s next door neighbor on Morris.

As a major destination for those with pockets full of discretionary spending power, La Conner was as good a measure as any of consumer prosperity. The bursting of the dot.com bubble, the deadening effect of a relentless, ratcheting succession of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes and the decline of export markets all added up to slow times.

The sudden, convulsive reaction of the nation to the horrendous suicide attacks on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers only put an exclamation mark at the end of what had been the unraveling of the economy over the past year.

Until 9-11, as Wyman noted, nobody wanted to talk about how bad things were getting as though to avoid giving definition to a vague nightmare.

After the WTC disaster, however, La Conner merchants ceased whistling through the graveyard. What happened then might serve as inspiration and a model to other small towns, regardless of their economic base.

La Conner is blessed with a beautiful natural setting. It is a town inhabited by creative, independent and restless spirits. In the post-World War II period, a few artists, writers and free thinkers found their way to the little fishing town on Swinomish Slough.

There was something about the way La Conner knit together the seams of soil and sea, the works of farmer and fisherman, that along with the permeating mists of morning touched the soul.

So the artists and writers came and for a couple of decades made La Conner their own. Many of the artists flocked around the late Guy Anderson, one of the masters of what would become the Northwest School, which included the likes of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan and others. A major feature of Northwest School painters was the celebration of a special quality of light, which was ironic given the shortage of it during the winter seasons.

By the mid-1970s La Conner’s eclectic collection of artists and characters became a draw to curious visitors. As more galleries, boutiques and restaurants opened to serve these new visitors, some of the town’s residents recoiled in horror at the cutesifying of La Conner. Some of them moved on.

But what the new era brought to La Conner was an alternative to the dying fishing industry and the unpredictable nature of the farm economy. The tourist industry brought new money and new jobs.

And, like it or not, the artists were as responsible as anyone for the new prosperity.

The town’s small, but well-run non-profit Museum of Northwest Art (MONA) this spring opened an exhibit of all the Northwest greats that drew big crowds from Western Washington, especially from the Seattle area. The exhibition also featured many in the next generation of Northwest artists, including sculptor Phillip McCracken and Richard Gilkey, himself a La Conner resident. It was genuinely a major regional art event and it helped launch La Conner’s spring recovery from the doldrums of last year.

Before that could happen, all those creative and independent merchants had to come together. After last year, business leaders were determined to get a jump on the season. The La Conner Chamber’s advertising committee then went to work.

In past seasons merchants along State Street and First Avenue had tended to do their own thing with advertising. They might take out small ads in local newspapers, put out fliers or rely on their mailing lists.

The Chamber advertising committee had a different idea for this year. Instead of “shot-gunning” their advertising over a wide area without clear focus they proposed to get as many merchants as possible to agree to pool their ad dollars. With a war chest in the mid-five figures, they could place their advertising where it would do the most good.

Wild Iris Inn owner David Britt and Melinda Burghduff, sales manager for the La Conner Inn & Channel Lodge, were co-chairs of the advertising committee. The other committee members were Linda Cole, of Amenities Gallery; Marci Plank, Viking Cruises; Earlene Beckes, Skagit Bay Hideaway; Peggy Prince, From Grandma with Love; Mike Bruggeman, the Heron Inn, and Gretchen Caldwell, executive director of the La Conner Chamber.

Members of the committee fanned out into the community. They spoke to their fellow merchants about the demographic they might target with advertising. The committee gathered all the information they could from the business community and then worked out a strategy.

“We ended up getting 57 merchants to pool their advertising dollars,” said Britt. “We decided to focus the advertising in one area rather than shot-gunning all over the place.”

“The town just came together,” agrees Burghduff, Britt’s co-chair on the committee. “A lot of these small shops can only do so much on their own. We had an unprecedented level of cooperation.”

The co-chairs declined to say exactly how much money they raised for the campaign, but reliable rumor places the amount in the mid-five figures – enough to have some serious impact if spent the right way.

As the committee went about raising the money, it also began the process of refining the definition of the demographic group to which the advertising would be directed. As the effort developed the merchants who gave their time and effort began to realize that it was about more than just money and demographics. They were discovering themselves as a community.

Linda Cole, a thin, live-wire presence amid her inventory of high-end decorator art, talked about the time she ran into fellow merchant Cathy Wyman on the street – not in La Conner, but at a furniture show in North Carolina. The two had never been more than nodding acquaintances in La Conner. Since then they have become good friends and, as it turned out, near neighbors in their shops on Morris Street.

The empty streets Cole was seeing back in La Conner concerned her. She became one of the prime movers to establish an advertising committee at the La Conner Chamber. The merchants had discovered that by assigning responsibilities to committees within the organization they greatly increased the likelihood of things getting done.

The committee devoured its task. Britt had some experience to bring to the effort. Before taking over the Wild Iris Inn several years ago, he had been in charge of a $400 million advertising budget for ConAgra, the second largest food company in the world.

“It’s the same principle whether your advertising budget is in the millions or the thousands,” he said. “You identify your target group and go after them.”

Perhaps not too surprisingly the favorite demographic for the merchants was identified as upper middle income people between the ages of 35 and 65. And where was the greatest concentration of those folks?

“Within 40 miles radius of the Space Needle,” says Britt.

So the merchants of little La Conner massed their dollars and bought media ads in the big city. The result? The best spring business activity since the spring of 2000.

The committee correctly assumed that the summer months would largely take care of themselves. The trick was to stretch the season between spring and fall. So it was decided to spend the bulk of the ad dollars on Seattle area media roughly between March and May and then again between September and November.

Interspersed along the way were a series of events, with the annual spring blooming of the tulips being the traditional launcher of tourist season on the Skagit flats. Spring came late this year, as did the blossoms, but the hoped-for traffic of day trippers and weekend looky-loos came with it.

The Chamber advertising committee had correctly anticipated that the number of out-of-state and foreign visitors would decline, at least in part, due to worries about flying as well as continuing concerns about the economy. Even the number of Canadian visitors would drop both because of the strong U.S. vs. Canadian dollar and the increased hassles in border crossings. So, La Conner tapped the market right in its own back yard.

“People are looking closer to home rather than flying” for their leisure time, said Wyman, adding with satisfaction, “our numbers are good this year.”

Michael Bruggeman, who just a few months ago took ownership of the Heron Inn, was another member of the advertising committee. Cathy Wyman says he took on his assignment as though undertaking a term paper.

But Bruggeman’s research is part of what sold the advertising and promotion program to the merchants. He knew that Seattle was the prime market. He learned that the Washington Wine Commission had paid for an insert into Seattle Magazine, itself pitched to a high income demographic. The insert promoted the sale of tickets to the Taste of Washington, the annual festival of good food and wine.

As part of his research Bruggeman interviewed the commission’s public relations person. Did the ads work? He wanted to know. Yes. They not just worked, but contributed to a doubling of ticket sales over last year, was the answer.

The efforts of Bruggeman and his fellow advertising committee members helped bring nearly 60 merchants together and gave them the confidence to pool their money for well-placed ads aimed at the Seattle market.

Wyman, Burghduff, Britt and Cole still marvel at what they call the “unprecedented” outpouring of support from the merchant community for the advertising effort.

Wyman also gives a lot of credit to the chamber’s spirited executive director Gretchen Caldwell, whose enthusiasm helps drive many of the town’s projects.

Caldwell confirms what the research leading up to the ad campaign has borne out.

“It proves that visitors are taking more short vacations closer to home,” she said.

Cindy Nelson, general manager of La Conner Channel Lodge and County Inn, says her hotels’ relatively expensive rooms are pretty much booked up for the summer. The year so far “hasn’t been as bad as we thought it was going to be,” she said.

At Britt’s Wild Iris Inn, the most expensive rooms are the first to be booked. Travelers from nearby Seattle are most likely to indulge themselves with some comforts, especially since they don’t have to spend money on airfare.

“We are seeing results from our (advertising) targeting efforts,” says Britt, happy to see his 19 rooms largely booked for the summer.

In fact most of La Conner’s hotel and bed and breakfast rooms are booked through September, another sign of revival in the larger economy. And the town loves those overnighters.

“We’ve found that overnight guests spend more in shops and restaurants than the day-only visitors,” says Britt.

The Chamber’s “beautification committee” has made its contribution as well. Among its projects are the many flowerpots that line First Avenue. And the dozens of teak benches that also line the street are heavily used by the senior citizens representing the elder end of La Conner’s favorite democraphic. Roberta Folger of the Olive Shop headed up that effort.

One of the biggest fund-raising events for the beautification fund this year was spaghetti feed — $6 a plate ($4 for seniors).

“The sense of community was fantastic,” enthuses Linda Cole. “We had 350 people lined up for the feed. We took a small town and made it a community.”