OUR OWN DOWNTOWN SUCCESS STORY - IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN COUNTERPOINT

When our lads, Andrew and Robert, opted to remain in their hometown, after graduating high school, to open a vintage guitar and music shop, here (Gravenhurst), instead of Bracebridge (what we had originally planned), we knew it was going to be a tough, unforgiving haul for the first five years. It has been. No doubt. Yet for any of the growing pains we’ve experienced, the lengthy low points of income and lesser numbers of visitors, we’ve never once blamed the town or the downtown community for our own shortfalls. We didn’t locate on the mainstreet because we needed help from our neighbor businesses. Nice when it was offered but we didn’t bank on it. We counted on ourselves. It meant being realistic and honest about our business dynamic, and our willingness to do what it takes to survive. We were our harshest critics, and frankly, what was happening on the rest of the mainstreet, while of general interest, was not a pre-occupation. We stuck to fixing our own business.

We opened our shop without any idea of instant success, or any projection that wasn’t based on the harshest overview and expectation. We didn’t blame the town for economic downturns, and we didn’t feel the problems of the mainstreet, even five years ago, were in any way, contributing to our fiscal disappointments. We took the Dragon’s Den approach to our business plan, and had rigorous review sessions weekly, to maintain the level of commitment, to improve our customer service however necessary. We began with the idea of making a hometown business....reflective of the hometown we are so enormously proud,....... catering to the needs of our diverse, all walks of life clientele. It was our plan to build a Gravenhurst business...... not run a music franchise; a transplanted city-themed music business, onto our town’s mainstreet. It must be a friendly place to drop in and chat about music and stuff, and be a significant cog in the mechanism of the local entertainment industry. We’ve been demanding of ourselves, and have never believed there wasn’t room for improvement, or the reason to outreach ever further, in anticipation of lean times ahead. No one who visits our store, can say we aren’t hometown sensitive and reflective of the good life here in one of the most beautiful regions on earth.

We don’t like being lumped in, by loose association, into the overview of general malaise, responsible for downtown business failures and re-location. We don’t like being ignored, especially when we have so much to be thankful for, being located in a wonderful, accommodating building, with an affordable rent (and landlord who we can sincerely call our friend), on a mainstreet that has every capability of surviving, for the next century, despite the doomsayers who can’t get beyond the reality that change..... to a Victorian era mainstreet..... is inevitable and necessary. Every mainstreet in North America has gone through the stages leading up to total revitalization. No matter how much internal bickering and blame-gaming goes on, Gravenhurst’s mainstreet revitalization will require major physical improvement in the next 20 years......and some old and dear buildings are going to disappear. A new commercial interest will settle upon Gravenhurst in the future, and as we witnessed with a new drug store development, revitalization, to be competitive, can involve a serious changes to the architectural landscape. Main street reconstruction is a big first step in a new era of main street interest. We’re glad it happened.

While we expect the stories about business deficiencies, and mainstreet shortfalls, will continue to get media coverage, we’ll just muddle along and hope at some time, just for a wee visit, someone connected to the town or the media, will drop in and say hello. Maybe then we could tell them about our own success story......and why we are delighted to be located on the main street of Gravenhurst.