Name of business: Dewey Street
Address: 2960 S. Durango Road, Suite 111, Las Vegas, NV 89117
Phone: 767-0338
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.dewey-street.com
Hours of operation: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays; 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays; during scheduled class times and after hours by appointment.
Owned by: Cindy Nickerson and her daughter, Laurie Nickerson
In business since: January
Describe your business.
Dewey Street is a place for people to come together to make things. We offer classes in various arts and crafts, with our most popular being sewing lessons for kids and teens. We also have a long-arm quilting machine, which adds the finishing touches to quilts people piece together. In addition, we rent out space to folks who need large cutting and work tables.
Our core values are family and enabling the creative process. We are a mother-daughter team, and the inspiration for our shop is my grandmother, Joan Faust. She was a child of the Depression, a young woman who went to work making guns during World War II and a mother who raised two children alone in Western Massachusetts. She was an extremely strong woman. She lived in the same small house on Dewey Street for 86 years. It was there that my mother and I learned the value of making things by hand.
Who are your customers?
We are not just for kids or women or the creatively inclined. The beauty of this space is that anyone can learn new things, and everyone can be creative if given the resources.
Our customers are kids and teens who come for Saturday morning sewing lessons, retirees who wander over after shopping at the Christmas Goose fabric shop across the parking lot, moms who want help making items for their families, 5-year-olds who come in for craft camp, and a LGBTQ youth group that joined us for our nonprofit Sunday.
What are nonprofit Sundays, and why do you do them?
There is such a need for self-expression through arts and crafts, and often the folks who could benefit the most from such experiences don’t have access to them.
Our inspiration, a woman named Joan from West Springfield, Mass., was always doing things for her community. She would even plant flowers along the side of the road so people would have a more pleasant commute.
My mother and I learned from her that it doesn’t take much to change your community. So it was a no-brainer for us to open our shop one day a month to people who normally wouldn’t have access to an art studio.
We reserve the last Sunday of every month for this. If any other nonprofits are interested, drop us an email at [email protected]. We can gear projects to specific groups.
What makes your business unique?
Besides being one of the few places in Las Vegas that offer craft lessons, we embrace traditional crafts and make them relevant today.
When you say “arts and crafts,” most people think of macaroni and Popsicle stick art. While we love those kinds of projects, we take the same principles using materials you have laying around and inject them with a jolt of modern.
We also pride ourselves on being local women business owners in a sea of chain stores. We bring our small-town mentality to our shop. If you email us, we get back to you. If you need quilting, you talk with Cindy, who will be the one making the quilt with you.
What is your business philosophy?
Back to basics. The society we live in now is so tech-savvy. Everyone is plugged in and glued to little screens. While we use technology in our shop, we are afraid that people are becoming removed from hands-on creation.
What’s the most important part of your job?
Resurrecting dying art forms.
If you ask 100 people what “quilting” is, maybe a handful have heard of it and only a few would know how to do it. At Dewey Street, you can learn how.
With websites like Pintrest and Etsy, there has been a resurgence in the desire to create things. We can help people who want to learn. Sharing knowledge is what we are all about.
What is the hardest part about doing business in Las Vegas?
Vegas is an interesting city. Initially, the hardest part was jumping through all the hoops that startups have to go through. It was such a long process to get all the correct forms and documents in order. It was much more complicated here than it was in Massachusetts.
Now that we are up and running, the hardest part is convincing folks to come in and try a class. There is a trust that has to be built up. Getting people to shop local can be tricky because we don’t have the backing of a national brand.
What is the best part about doing business in Las Vegas?
There is opportunity here. While we are known for the Strip, there is a huge need for activities for locals. Having nieces and nephews, I see my sister struggling to find things to do as a family with the kids. Las Vegas needs places like Dewey Street.
What obstacles has your business overcome?
The urban sprawl of the city. There are so many strip malls and shopping plazas that many people don’t really know what is in their neighborhoods. This is not a city where people explore. This is a city where people get in their cars and go to their destination.
How can Nevada improve its business climate?
It was really frustrating jumping through all the hoops required for a startup. It was also incredibly expensive.
The process for establishing a business should be streamlined. It was a daunting task being faced with mounds of paperwork all going to different offices with different fees. It would be easy for people to give up before they even start.
What have you learned from the recession?
We weren’t here for the initial drop. But our experience has been to just jump in and try. If one thing fails, try something else.
We don’t know how our business will evolve and change over the years, but with the willingness to adapt and think creatively, we are prepared to handle blips in the economy.