Focusing on Pointe
The owners of Empire Dance Shop, who write out their monthly balance sheets by hand on pieces of ledger paper, maintain a computer database that tracks which pointe shoes each of the shop's customer has tried over the years and what they thought of each pair-all in an effort to arrive at the perfect fit.
" I don't really know business," says Phillip, who owns the downtown Spokane store with his wife, Sally. "I know feet."
Phillip does know feet. In fact, he doesn't really even need the database because he has each customer's shoe size and preference committed to memory.
A customer named Erin, for instance, wears a Freed-brand pointe shoe, size 7.5 medium with some special adjustments, while a customer named Jennifer wears a specialized Capezio-brand pointe shoe in size 5.5, he recited to a reporter who recently visited the shop, at 214 S. Post.
Phillip, who was born in England and began dancing at age 7, later danced for 12 years for a professional ballet company in Germany, which is where he met his wife, who also was a dancer for the company. He says such experience taught them the importance of customer service about fitting pointe shoes-two traits that he believes have helped Empire Dance survive.
Empire Dance, which opened in 1950, sells dance wear and accessories, such as leotards, tights, skirts, legwarmers, and dance bags, as well as ballet, tap, jazz, and pointe shoes.
The 2,000-square-foot shop carries eight brands of pointe shoes, including Freed, which Phillip describes as the "Rolls Royce" of pointe shoes, as well as top brands such as the handmade Capezio Professional Tap Oxfords, which retail for $190 a pair. Phillip even has designed his own pointe shoe, which is made for the shop by Capezio. That shoe was designed around the foot of Empire Dance customer Jennifer Martin, who now is a ballerina with the Western Ballet Theater in Boise, he says.
The store has two main types of customers: those who walk into the shop and those who call its toll-free number to order merchandise from a catalog it publishes and mails annually.
Phillip says he used two fingers to peck at the keys of an electric typewriter to craft the text for the shop's first catalog, for which he pasted photos into place. That first catalog, which was sent to about 200 people, went out in 1987. The catalog, which since has taken on a more professional look, now is sent to about 3,000 addresses, he says.
The husband and wife team, who bought the shop in 1984, were introduced to it by Sally's uncle, Jack Hood, who had co-owned the building in which Empire Dance Shop occupied space. He repeatedly would tell the family, who were living in Germany, that they needed to buy the shop, which was owned by Floyd and Althea Braman.
In 1983, during a U.S. visit with Sally's parents, the family came to Spokane to see their uncle and ended up taking out an option to buy the shop.
Phillip and Sally returned to Germany and fulfilled their contracts with the Kiel Opera Ballet. The following year, they packed up and moved to Spokane to buy and operate the shop, which now employs seven people.
"We went from being ballet dancers to businesspeople," Phillip says. "It was definitely a new venture in life."
Phillip believes that his background in ballet has helped him as a businessperson, although he still has a hard time seeing himself as one. He says ballet taught him how to work hard and how to work with others. "Being a professional dancer is demanding work. You have to love it in order to stay with it," he says. "I believe the same is true in business. I stay with this because I love it."
Phillip is most comfortable working the shop floor, greeting customers as they enter the door and fitting ballerinas with their first pair of pointe shoes, while his wife handles the business side, handling payroll, bill paying, and taxes.
He declines to disclose the shop's annual sales, but says business typically slows during the summer and picks up in early September when many dance classes here resume. In the fall, many of the customers include young girls and their mothers who are in search of pink ballet slippers, leotards, and tights.
Since Jazzercise and other forms of aerobic exercise have increased in popularity, Empire Dance has felt a bit of a squeeze.
"There's an incredible amount of competition. You can buy dance wear just about anywhere, anymore," Phillip says. He thinks of his shop as one that appeals to the more serious ballet, tap, and jazz dancers, though.
"We've developed a niche for the discerning dancer," Phillip says.
His knowledge of ballet-and the fitting of pointe shoes specifically-has lent some credibility to the shop, and, as a result, the sale of pointe shoes to advanced-level dancers has become a big part of the shop's business.
Empire Dance sells shoes to dancers at the School of American Ballet in New York, as well as to members of the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet Co., the Alabama Ballet Co., and the Miami Ballet Co. Phillip fit some of those dancers with their first pair of pointe shoes, while others found the store through word-of-mouth, he says.
"I like to think that I'm one of the few people in Spokane who sell pointe shoes because I'm one of the few people here who know them," Phillip says.
The appropriate fit of pointe shoes is crucial, and there are several aspects of a pointe shoe that might require tweaking to assure a good fit. Pointe shoes, Phillip explains, have at least two measurements: a number, which indicates the shoe size, and a letter, which indicates the width.
Certain brands of pointe shoes, mostly Freeds, also have a symbol branded onto the sole, which signifies the cobbler who made the shoes. For many customers, Phillip will order ballet shoes from specific cobblers, and many cobblers even are willing to custom make shoes for dancers.
Phillip prefers that a customer come into the shop so he can see her feet and how the pointe shoes fit. He has been known, however, to fit pointe shoes based only on a tracing of a person's foot and on answers to his questions.
Despite customers' requests, Phillip says he has no desire to open additional Empire Dance outlets.
"There's no way I could 'McDonald's' this place," he says.
Phillip does hope to increase the shop's exposure through its new site on the World Wide Web. The web site - at EmpireDanceShop.com - carries information about the shop and lists the various types of merchandise it stocks.