Yorkton is in a somewhat unique position right now. At the moment, there’s a fair bit of retail space open and available for development. The city’s downtown is especially wide open for new business, much of it in recently renovated buildings. There are open storefronts everywhere, and with the flurry of activity happening in the former Painted Hand Casino, there are more to come.
Yorkton is also a city that, for whatever reason, has a fair number of gaps in the businesses on offer. It is great for mainstream businesses – if you want to buy men’s pants, you’re spoiled for choice – but once you get off the beaten track you start to see limitations in what you can get here. We are starved for niche businesses, stuff that caters to hobbies and more nerdy pastimes.
It’s not completely dire, there has been a board game store set up in the city in the past year, for example. That’s great, but I think we need to make a case for setting up more niche businesses around town.
Take my somewhat nerdy hobbies, photography and strange video games. It’s possible to get started with photography in Yorkton, cameras are available, you can get some okay beginners lenses. If you want anything specialized, you’re either going to another city or going online, it’s just not possible to get much beyond that in the city. It’s hard to keep developing while sticking with local businesses.
Granted, it’s also probably great news for my bank account, since I’ve never gone into Don’s Photo without spending over $100, but it’s an example of a niche market that could be filled.
Games are a strange one, given that so many are distributed digitally now, and the stuff that gets strange nerds like myself to pay attention tend to be out of print, so it’s a business that might not work well on paper. But, it’s also something I’ve seen work in smaller towns like Humboldt, Sk. That place works by combining rare products and events that can bring people into the store to interact and play with each other. Given that the local options tend to focus squarely on the big, high budget products and leave the weird stuff off the shelf, I find I have to go outside of town to get what I want. A store could make itself a comfortable little niche here, with a dedicated clientele.
The other advantage of a niche store is that you’re going to be a draw for your very specific clientele.
These are stores that generally don’t otherwise exist in large numbers, even a big city might have one or two to serve the population. Yorkton has a large trading area, as the city loves to remind everyone, but it’s a large trading area which definitely won’t have that many niche businesses. It becomes a draw, and businesses that are more mainstream get spill over benefits, as people who buy cameras also need pants and food.
As a result, I hope that these newly open storefronts see a lot of niche businesses set up shop, including many which I personally don’t need to visit. If you can get a businesses with a dedicated customer base, it’s going to wind up doing fairly well.
