All in the family: Habitat team looks to new faces, new services, new clients.

Despite the adage against combining business and family, the mother-daughter management team at Habitat Housewares in Anchorage seems to have achieved a comfortable berth in the culinary-specialties niche. Mother Lori Atrops and daughter Stacie Wilson bought the gourmet kitchen store a few years back from its original owner and feel they've rightly steered operations at Habitat into the 21st century.

The bustling 8,000-square-foot store, a mainstay for decades at the University Center Mall at 36th Avenue and Old Seward Highway (www.habitathousewares.com), aims to be the comprehensive local center for all things culinary.

After a general computer-systems upgrade, they are confident that they're offering the benefits of a bridal-and-gift registry and general merchandising online without compromising operating efficiency. And for the modern bride in Alaska, the online element of a registry service is invaluable, Habitat managers believe. Previously, there were 10 full-time and 11 part-time employees, now there are eight full-timers and six who work part-time. New online accounts are inching along at 1 percent of total sales; managers anticipated growth in this sector would be gradual.

In 2006, they reported, except in December, the mall store approached or exceeded the monthly sales volume of two stores back in 2003, before Habitat closed its downtown location.

'RETAIL NEOPHYTES'

While Wilson had small-business experience, she confesses that "both of us were retail neophytes." In a field where quality and brand matter, there was a lot to learn fast, Atrops recalls. Wilson compares their early days to "drinking water through a firehose."

With a bachelor's degree in marketing, Wilson was in her 30s and had been involved in a handful of business ventures with her husband, Jeff, including a manufacturers' rep firm, commercial cabinetry and a construction-plans center. With the youngest of their two daughters starting kindergarten, she wanted the flexibility of having an operating partner, and she didn't have to look far to find one. Her mother, a registered nurse who'd moved on get a master's degree in English and teach at the university level, was ready for a change.

After 13 years of coaching university students in classroom and resource center settings, Atrops was finding it difficult to navigate from adjunct to permanent status and make what she felt she was worth. She was earning less back then, she reflects, than what some of her sales associates at Habitat are making now.

And so she became the on-site general manager for Habitat. Wilson typically oversees marketing/advertising and buying and was point-woman on the systems update.

"When I say no to something," explains Atrops, "I'm also saying yes to something else." Now she was guiding a business her family had enjoyed as customers and still experiencing the thrill of pleasurable recognition so familiar to writers.

"You know, this is a happy place," she says. She particularly enjoyed "the delight of, over and over again, seeing people find exactly what they're looking for," then taking it home or giving it as a gift.

The store had been popular around town for decades, and buying it, to her, meant "moving into a very positive environment, working with products I was very much interested in."

The women bought Habitat in partnership with their spouses, securing financing for the venture from First National Bank Alaska, based, in part, on their business track record. Wilson's entrepreneurial-minded husband, Jeff, trained as a geophysical engineer, and her father, Martin, a psychologist, take part in major business decisions, but leave Habitat's daily operations to the women.

In the process of working side-by-side with Wilson, Atrops says, "I saw a whole other side of my daughter that I would not have known-a creativity and an ability to process an enormous quantity of product data and to filter through all of that and come up with what is keen and right.... I could have told her she's good at marketing, but to see it has been a revelation."

A 50s MOVE

As for moving in her 50s from academia to take new "real-world" risks herself, "I like the challenge of making a difference and feeling a lot of autonomy.... It's been a bit of a discovery for me that I can do this and do it well."

"I've gained a lot of respect for her in business," Wilson says of her mother. "It's been fun to watch her be the boss ... the staff respects and likes her."

Fun is a word Wilson likes to use. Managers have opportunity to travel globally and explore their vendors, and customers can choose cooking classes that appeal to their interests. With the transient nature of retail in general and Alaska's population in particular, marketing never stops. She hopes at Habitat they've brought a sense of humor to the enterprise. The store also aims to educate customers and not just push products.

Clearly veteran employee Nelia Alexander, in her decades with Habitat, still appreciates special seasons and the business' family orientation. Born in Portugal, she is married to a military retiree who brought her to Alaska. She enjoys people and designing displays, and while ordering for Christmas may start in May, Alexander still gets excited when the yule-time merchandise is taken out of wraps.

Habitat managers say they rely on the special talents of staffers. In another example, Amanda Hebert shares with customers in classes, on the phone and on the floor her formal culinary training and professional baking expertise.

Occasionally staff meetings are used for training with manufacturer representatives, and the use of family resources may include Martin Atrops bringing to staff meetings practical tips on, say, de-personalizing exchanges with difficult customers.

With quality products, knowledgeable staff and without a sales-commission system inflating sales pressure, Alexander says, customers get enthusiastic attention. And with the store carrying close to 200 brands and 2,000 kitchen tools altogether, institutional knowledge helps.

A "frequent-buyer" discount card extends $25 credit for every $260 spent, and a newsletter shares gift-ordering ideas and such creative tips as renting a neutral cabin for a family holiday gathering.

Managers are on the go to try new things, which have included on-site spring and fall classes in which local celebrity chefs shared skills with customers. Along the way, managers attempt to sift out theory and reality.

"Cooking classes were a big rage in many places," Wilson says. "We find we have requests for them, but they aren't as full as we like them to be." And while cooking classes for children were popular, at Habitat they might have been a little too popular on the child-care side.

Managers now are planning to branch out again, combining cooking and travel in a five-day culinary tour of California's Napa Valley, hosted by Wilson and Atrops and planned for Oct. 26 to Oct. 30. Included, along with lodging, will be on-site cooking classes, wine tasting, and a day-long tour of a handful of private wineries.

Print Get the Mag Weekly Updates