Sumner Retail ( part 2)

Diversify they all tell us! Small cap, mid cap, large cap, ETFs, mutual funds, international, bonds and CDs. And I get it, having all one's eggs in one basket is foolish. However, during the great recession bonds and CDs were the only investments I had that did not drop. But buying bonds and CDs today with such a small interest rate is hard to do. If it were not for the exercise of selling stocks that appreciate more than 20% and using that money for bonds, I just could not make myself do it.

So what about a small business as a way to diversify? On the weekends, Kathy and I like to visit some of the small towns around Seattle and one of our favorite is a tiny town called Sumner. They have these festivals and block off Main Street ( yes, it really is called Main Street) and the people wander around the shops. There is commercial property available for both lease and purchase; they have not fully recovered from the recession.

Sumner is a cute town, they have a historic district with several antique shops and various knick knack stores. There are also a few stores that are real draws.

One of them is Sugar Babies. It started out as a consignment for kids clothes that have been outgrown seven years ago. Now it is huge! And if you want to find the perfect adorable outfit for that grandchild you love to spoil, this is your place. It is big enough to draw people from Federal Way, Auburn, Puyallup just to shop there and during the festivals people are likely to drive down from Seattle or Tacoma.

Another fantastic store is Sumner Woodworker Store. Wood for projects, power and hand tools, it is all there with an incredibly knowledgable staff that love what they do. Again, you will find people drive from fairly far away to come here. They even have coffee and comfortable chairs.

But the mother of all retail stores is The Old Cannery. 10 acres under roof, of furniture, art, talking robots, the largest model train I have ever seen. It is bar none, the largest furniture store I have ever seen. And people will drive a good distance to visit this place especially in the holiday season, they really do it right and as it says on their web site, "The Old Cannery is all about making furniture buying fun and hassle free." Almost every piece of furniture in my house is from the Cannery.

Every town needs a used book store and Sumner has A Good Book Cafe. Not sure where the "cafe" comes from, I did not see any food, but they stay pretty busy and they have a unique business model; they want you to bring the books back after you read them and they give you a discount on the additional books you buy.

There is one more thing that makes Sumner special; the train station. As you drive around Sumner you will notice a larger than normal collection of public parking lots. Commuters to Tacoma and Seattle come from all the surrounding areas, Buckley, Enumclaw, Lake Tapps, Bonney Lake, to park and ride to work. If you had a store within walking distance that was designed to pull those commuters in before they went home, you could strike paydirt.