CLEVELAND — Anyone who’s tried to start a small business knows there are many financial hurdles.
The challenge of paying rent, utilities, staff and insurance adds up fast and often prevents small vendors from ever leaving local markets and being able to have a brick-and-mortar store.
Sam Friedman is trying to change that.
He said he’s done a lot in his lifetime, from working in the religious sector to becoming a theater director, educator and a liaison for the Spanish government.
The journey brought him back to Cleveland, where his mom was starting a small business and needed his help to get it off the ground.
“I had no intention, I told her, ‘No, I’m not a businessman,’ and here we are,” Friedman said. “So, I did come back to the States. I came back to Cleveland to work with my mom on what became the Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve Company.”
Friedman said his biggest struggle was finding a retail space.
The places that are affordable, he said, are too far-flung, and the places in the heart of downtown, they’re too expensive or don’t get enough foot traffic.
“I’ve had a mission for a few years to create something that would be in the heart of a very vibrant, busy sector, that I knew it’d be very costly to do,” he said. “But I thought if we got enough businesses together to share the cost, maybe we could all afford to be somewhere very hip and popular.”
In 2021, seven hangars were built in Hingetown, a young and popular neighborhood.
He inquired about renting all seven hangars to 25 local vendors, learning he would have just a few months to fill them, as rent would be due as soon as construction was completed.
“I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘Can you not only do it, but can you pull off something that probably should take two or three years of work in six or seven months?’” he said. “And whatever, I always have full confidence in myself.”
Working non-stop for those months, Friedman said with the help of his team, City Goods opened in Sept. 2022.
Now, 25 local vendors take up space of six of the hangars, paying only minimal rent and utilities.
One of those vendors, graphic designer Scott Hudson, said he lost his job during the pandemic, making his local business his full-time job.
“When I lost my job during the day, my day job, I had to sort of quickly pivot towards coming up with different ways to grow my business,” Hudson said. “And one of them is my space here at City Goods that provided a lot of extra opportunity for my wares to be seen by the public.”
City Goods pays for insurance, marketing and staff, so all the vendors have to worry about is rent and a portion of utilities.
The reason they can make that model work is because the seventh hangar is a bar, and all its profits go back into paying for those resources.
“So City Goods, really, if you want to boil it down to the mission of missions, it is support local,” Friedman said. “That’s what this entire project is here for.”
A different business model could be much more profitable for Friedman, but he said it’s never been about the money.
As long as the bar makes enough to pay the bills, as it has been in these first few months, he’s confident they’ll stay afloat.
“Generating more profit as we go is not what’s needed,” he said. “We’re going to do okay. We’re gonna do just fine. These vendors will be able to keep their shops. More people will come. Those brands will grow, and hopefully City Goods will have been a very good model for how something can be done differently.”
Starting this May through September, City Goods will begin hosting outdoor markets with even more local vendors.
