Himalayas Enterprises has been open for more than a year, selling handmade clothing, shoes and jewellery from countries including India, China and Nepal.
“So we (find) many people get surprised to see these clothes because they say, ‘When we were in Hawaii… or Thailand I bought the clothes (like this) there,’ but we bring Thailand and Hawaii to our Lethbridge,” Abi Adhikari, the co-owner of Himalayas Enterprises, said.
Adhikari said they are seeing less business this year compared to last because of the economy, but said they are still doing pretty well.
The CEO at Economic Development Lethbridge said tourists are coming from the U.S. and locals are also sticking around to do shopping.
“So we are seeing a lot of U.S. travellers so that could be driving some of the activity that they are seeing, and in an economic downturn what we often see is a lot of entrepreneurs starting their own business. We see people that are interested in creating a job for themselves, so that could be why specialty stores are seeing more interests,” Trevor Lewington said.
In fact, the economic development office has seen almost 50 inquires this year from people thinking about starting up a business. It’s up almost double from this time last year.
“We had retailers ,for example, in Calgary, instead of opening there they go, ‘Well maybe I should open a store in Lethbridge.’…We haven’t see that before. So that’s exciting and that is kind of encouraging,” Lewington said.
Josh Walker opened J. Walker Golf store in February and he’s said the advantage for consumers going there is they know their product inside and out.
“We are just golf… I think that is refreshing to some customers when they come here, they know that they will be talking to an expert about golf equipment rather than not know who they are going to be talking to, because we have passion for it,” Walker said.
It’s that passion, that both these specialty stores hopes gets people to keep shopping local and inspire other entrepreneurs to maybe start their own business.
“We see that Lethbridge is becoming more diverse….we need this kind of store, but not only clothing… more other kinds of stores too,” Adhikari said.
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