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The great footwear designer Stuart Weitzman has a slogan: “A little obsessed with shoes.”
You could say the same for Ellsworth entrepreneur Kristie Billings, whose shop, Shoegazer, opened on Main Street two years ago.
“Ever since I was a little kid, any time I’d go anywhere, that’s what I’d want: shoes, shoes, a pocketbook, more shoes,” Billings said.
As a teenager, the Stonington native would make a pilgrimage to Portland several times a year to buy the edgy, trendy shoes she couldn’t get Down East – Dr. Martens, John Fluevogs and the like.
“I was an alternative young lady, listening to punk rock” she said, laughing.
She’s now 29, married, and in business, but she hasn’t lost her sense of style. During a recent interview, she sat in an old wooden theater seat in the middle of the showroom, dressed in a Chinese-print shirt and black pants, wearing red eyeshadow and a pair of lace-up ballet slippers, her darkly dyed hair pinned back with small barrettes.
And her “shoetique” perfectly reflects Billings’ taste – the walls are painted purple, with polka dots, and they’re adorned with vintage album covers. The sounds of Led Zeppelin and Ani DiFranco, to name a few, stream out of the stereo. The store gets its name from the Shoegazing genre of music, in which the bands never looked at the audience, they only looked at their shoes.
Hey, if the shoe fits.
Today, Billings carries many of the brands she loved as a teenager, as well as a host of other stylish and functional footwear.
Whether you’re looking for chunky Mary-Janes with a purple cat’s face on the toe, a pair of sexy red sandals, or a pair of sensible walking shoes from Australia, chances are you’ll find it here.
“I want to keep my product fresh, and it’s important to keep up with lots of styles and trends, but also think about function,” Billings said.
That combination of style and substance has attracted a loyal following of customers at Shoegazer. When she opened the shop, Billings figured even the most devoted regulars would stop in once, maybe twice a year. But the need for a “frequent buyer card” soon became apparent.
“I have people who have already gone through two,” she said, laughing. “People come in a lot. They come in once a month to see what new merchandise you have.”
One of those people stopped by on a recent Friday morning. The woman had just returned from Florida, and she wanted a new pair of sandals to show off her pedicure. She liked her new flip-flops so much that she stuffed her old pair into her handbag and wore them home.
Billings tailors her selection to her clientele – in the fall, she carries a lot of “back-to-school, loafer-type things,” but she also sells a lot of comfortable, casual shoes for area chefs and waitstaff to wear to work. Some businesswomen want a more sophisticated dress shoe, a market that Billings is working to expand, but on the weekends, they may want to wear something playful. She also caters to men, with a smaller but well-edited collection of shoes and boots.
Her prices are in step with the local economy, and par for the brands she carries. In summer, they range from $25 to $120 a pair. And her accessories – whimsical socks and tights, urban-chic handbags, and hats – are reasonable as well.
“I’m really trying hard to make it be a price range that can draw in a diverse audience,” Billings said. “It’d be great to have designer shoe brands, but at the same time, let’s be honest. We’re in Down East Maine. Who really can afford Marc Jacobs loafers? … I don’t want Shoegazer to be the kind of shop where people come in and say, ‘Oh my God, there’s nothing in here for me; it’s way too expensive.'”
Billings had enough experience in retail to know how much is too much. After graduating from high school, she moved to Portland, where she worked in food service before landing a job at Walkabout, “a comfort shoe place” that sold Birkenstocks and the like.
She liked it there, but she had always wanted to work at Terra Firma – the funky shoe shop on Congress Street that served as her childhood shopping destination. One day she went there to browse, and on her way out, she handed the manager her number and told her to call if the shop ever needed help. The owner called Billings later that afternoon, and she ended up working there for six years, eventually as manager.
“I loved that store, and that’s what I modeled Shoegazer after,” Billings said.
She didn’t love it enough to buy it when it came up for sale in 2001, however. Billings had just gotten married, and she wanted to return to her hometown, or at least to her home county. She met with a small-business counselor at the University of Southern Maine, then met with a banker, and started scouting out storefronts in Ellsworth and Belfast.
Ellsworth turned out to be a better fit – there were other shoe stores in town, but none like she had in mind. Billings wanted to offer something different without competing with the existing businesses in town.
“I want us each to have our own style,” Billings said. “It’s a small community and I think we should work together just to try to bring people here.”
That can be a challenge, especially in a town like Ellsworth, where business isn’t truly seasonal, but it definitely peaks in the summer.
“It’s such a vibrant downtown – you don’t see any empty storefronts and there’s always stuff happening,” said Joe Perkins, a small-business specialist with Washington-Hancock Community Agency. “People are cautiously optimistic about this season [because] last year wasn’t earth-shattering. The economy is still a question in some people’s minds.”
Billings has been working with Perkins to make her business more viable year-round. She participated in WHCA’s Incubator without Walls program, and recently completed the agency’s Hire and Higher project. It is Perkins’ hope that Billings can expand her business to a point where she can hire an employee, which would free her to develop and streamline her marketing efforts. Though there’s room to grow, Perkins said, her enthusiasm is key to her success.
“It’s her passion for what she does – she absolutely loves shoes,” he said. “She loves meeting people. She can just strike up a conversation with anybody. She loves the challenges of retail, of finding the right shoe for the right customer. But her biggest strength is the obvious passion she has for what she’s doing.”
It’s a passion she has had since she was a little girl on Deer Isle, playing dress-up with her nana’s shoes, and later as a punk-rock teenybopper driving two hours for a decent pair of Doc Martens. Sitting in her cozy, comfortably hip shop in Ellsworth, it’s clear that things have come full circle for Billings.
“If I were 16 again, I would’ve definitely owned these cat shoes, these Asian doll china flats, and these Dr. Martens. I would’ve worn these leopard thongs too,” she said, picking up a pair of faux fur flip-flops. “Sometimes, I’m like, ‘Is that why I’m in the shoe business? So I can always have good shoes? Maybe, maybe.”
Shoegazer is located at 173 Main St. in Ellsworth. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday and Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday, and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 667-5453. For information on WHCA’s small-business program, call 664-2424.
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