By Rebekah TsadikThe Daily Northwestern
The elderly man who walked into Dr. Wax on Monday afternoon asked to sell movies. The owner of the Evanston used-record store directed the potential customer down the street to a competing business.
Dr. Wax’s co-owner Brad Lazar said his store has put a halt on buying items from customers for resale.
“All of that’s on hold,” Lazar said. “We just have so much inventory right now, man.”
Dr. Wax, 1615 Sherman Ave., joins a growing pool of local businesses being eclipsed by the Internet’s vast marketplace of cheap and new merchandise.
“It’s killed us,” Lazar said. “It’s killed our industry.”
Music stores face stiff competition from Apple Inc., which recently announced that listeners have downloaded more than 2 billion songs from its iTunes store.
Lazar said many people prefer purchasing a single song instead of an entire album.
The owners of the Evanston stationery store Papyrus face similar competition from the Internet. The store, located at 1619 Sherman Ave., is not permitted to operate its own Web site independent of the corporate site, store manager Larry Matson said.
The business, only 18 months old, relies on word of mouth to get most of its customers, Matson said.
“More and more every day, we get people saying they can get the same thing on the Internet for 20 percent off and ‘Will you match that?’ ” Matson said.
The store does not match prices, he said.
But not all Evanston business owners find the picture so bleak.
For The Tint Shop, a leather repair store at 1636 Orrington Ave., the Internet poses no threat. Even though the shop is without a Web site, it does not concern owner Alex Bond.
“Nobody is going to mail shoes by the Internet,” he said.
One block south, a camera store connects to customers online.
Patrons of Wolf Camera, 616 Davis St., can purchase the store’s products and upload digital photo albums online. After an hour, picture prints are available from the store. The Web site serves more customers than the Evanston store’s street parking can fit, said manager Andre-Dre Theodore.
“We can do a lot more than we did last year,” Theodore said. “The Internet has helped us business-wise.”
In fact, Wolf Camera has expanded and invested in more equipment for photo enlargement and DVD-making.
But the Internet is both a gift and a curse for Jim Coello, owner of North Shore Coins, 1501 Chicago Ave. Coello sells rare coins both at his store and through eBay.com, where merchandise typically moves faster and at higher prices.
“(The Internet) definitely gives you a bigger marketplace,” Coello said. “It has certainly helped my capital, which is something you run out of quickly in this business.”
Coello said he could buy a silver dime in person for 80 cents and sell that same coin online for more than $3, plus shipping – a 375 percent markup. Coello said these transactions can generate thousands of dollars within a couple of hours.
But some merchants, Coello’s potential customers, have taken advantage of these larger online profit opportunities. They list their coins on the Internet instead of bringing them to Coello’s store.
In-store transactions continue to dominate Coello’s business model, but he plans to create a Web site this year.
Dr. Wax of Evanston does not have a Web site, and Lazar has no plans to create one. The store currently sells merchandise through Amazon.com, where boxed sets of television series are especially popular, Lazar said.
Dr. Wax has faced the Internet dilemma with a mixture of staff cuts and plans for more aggressive advertising, Lazar said.
He said he hopes to attract clients from the newly-opened Sherman Plaza residences across the street.
“There are still these types of businesses that are succeeding,” Lazar said. “And we want to be one of them.”
Reach Rebekah Tsadik at [email protected].
