In the nearly 15 years that Brian Phelps has owned Boulder Creek Feed and Pet Supply, he has watched small businesses in the downtown area open, struggle, and eventually close.
Now, faced with an eroding customer base and rising costs, Phelps is preparing to close the doors of what he described as the only full-line pet store in the valley.
“We kind of limped through last year,” he said. “Basically, the store’s not feeding itself anymore.”
For Phelps, who started his pet supply business in the mid-1990s in the old Firemen’s Hall on Forest Street before moving to the Odd Fellows’ building, the decision to close was the result of attrition more than anything else.
“I’ve lost a lot of customers to the housing crunch,” he said.
He added that many of his former customers found they had less to spend on their pets or were lured away by the lower prices big-box stores could afford to charge because of the vast quantities they can order at once.
“I’m not big enough to buy enough to get the special prices (from suppliers),” Phelps said. “The big guys can operate with such a small profit margin — they’re not in the real world.”
Phelps, a former zookeeper and holistic veterinarian’s assistant, said he always tried to provide more wholesome, natural pet food than one typically finds at big-box stores, which became a luxury fewer households were able to afford when the economy soured.
According to the most recent data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 59,134 businesses opened in California in 2010. By the following year, more than 11,000 of those had closed their doors.
According to the bureau’s data, of the 70,089 businesses that opened in the same time period as Boulder Creek Feed and Pet Supply, barely 25 percent were still in business as of 2011.
“I’ve had quite a few customers who have lost their businesses,” Phelps said. “We just managed to hold on a little bit longer.”
When it became clear that Phelps’ position was untenable, he said he explored the possibility of selling the business. However, he decided against it when he learned it could take as long as nine months to find a buyer — and even then, there was no guarantee.
“We couldn’t hold out that long for an ‘if,’” he said. “I don’t see a bank lending money to a business that’s not making money.”
Phelps said most of his stock had been reduced in price by 30 percent, not much above his cost, in an attempt to clear the inventory — most of which cannot be returned to the supplier.
“If I go much further, I’m going to be cutting into what I paid for it,” he said, adding that he had planned to sell the store to fund his retirement. “Now, what’s in the store is my savings account.”
He said he hoped to have most of the inventory sold by the end of next week to give him sufficient time to clean out the building.
“Luckily, I already got rid of all the livestock,” he said, referring to feeder fish and mice.
Once the store closed, Phelps said he planned to take some downtime to explore his options for his future — which, he admitted, might mean moving away from the valley he’s called home for 16 years.
“I haven’t had a vacation in 14½ years,” he said laughing. “A town needs a store that supports the community, and the store needs the community to support it.”
