Robin McGuire cast her gaze down Main Street on a recent Friday morning, one less day she has as a businesswoman in Cranbury.
For little more than a year, she has operated Magnolia Gifts & Vintage on Park Place East. She opened in June 2017, but Aug. 10 will be her last day of being open in town.
“I was hopeful,” she said, standing next to a message board that reads “Moving Sale, up to 50% off entire store.”
McGuire said that about two months ago, she made up her mind to leave. She said she plans to head to a better and bigger location in Mercer County even as she said she did “really well” in Cranbury.
For local businesses, the appeal of Cranbury as a quiet, small community can work against them.
“It’s not a busy town,” said local businessman David Wells, who has put his building on Main Street up for sale. He said Cranbury is a place where some “like it sleepy.”
Jill Jarvis Wargo, owner of the Highbar Boutique on Main Street, said it is critical for businesses “to have your unique identity.”
Wargo, a former hospital administrator, said the town needs to be a destination, a place with more restaurants and other businesses.
McGuire said that to her, there needs to be more events that bring people into town, more than just Cranbury Day, the annual street fair held in September. She also said it was necessary for the leader of the Cranbury Business Association to have a business on Main Street.
A representative of the business association could not be reached for comment.
Lina Llona, president of the Middlesex County Regional Chamber of Commerce, said her sense of the retail sector in this part of New Jersey is that retailers are “holding their own.”
“But I think they are struggling with what goes on through the internet, internet shopping,” she said. “If you were in the business, you would have to be doing that, some kind of internet sales or something, because everyone’s online.”
According to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau, “E-commerce” sales made up 9.5 percent of all retail sales in the first quarter of 2018. In all, that made up $123.7 billion worth of purchases online, the government estimated.
Retailers, though, find themselves in good economic times. Last month, the federal government released its estimate for retail and food sales for June, at nearly $507 billion, or up 0.5 percent from May. Overall, the gross domestic product was up 4.1 percent in the second quarter of this year.
Mayor Glenn Johnson is also the owner of a small building in town where he and his wife have had tenants that have included retailers. In an interview, he shared the advice he gives them.
“When I’ve sat down with people who wanted to rent the space, I’ve always given them the same advice, and that is you’ve got to advertise,” he said. “Cranbury is a small town and generally speaking, you can’t really rely on just the people here to keep a business afloat. So I’ve always suggested that people get some advertising going in some surrounding areas so they have potential customers coming from elsewhere.”
Wargo said most of her customers come from outside of Cranbury, from Manalapan and Princeton.
In McGuire’s case, she spoke on a day when she had organized a sidewalk sale in town. She is “sad” to leave, having had “really great customers.”
“Yeah, it’s just such a shame,” she said. “We’ve all put time and money in our businesses, and we all want to succeed.”