Surviving the Recession: Kingstown Farm, Home & Garden

Speaking with Liz Starkey, co-founder and co-owner of Kingstown Farm, Home & Garden, reveals a different kind of success story — the local sort we wish we heard about more often.

The story of small town small business today is frequently framed as a sad tale of David losing to Goliath. The titanic economic might of big box retailers forces small, locally focused businesses to close down. Smaller companies cannot compete with the low prices and wide regional pull that the big boxes can command due to their enormous volume of business.

Numerous cases show that these low prices come at a high cost for communities. Money leaves the local economy and disappears into the corporate ether. Minimum wage jobs, sans benefits, replace the former positions at the companies that priced their goods in a way that enabled them to pay their employees living wages and benefits. The community loses; the corporation wins.

Even in this climate, Liz and her husband, Chris, have continued to grow Kingstown Farm, Home & Garden for over fifteen years.

“Back in ‘09,” Liz says, “we took the position that we would not just say, ‘this is a recession, and it will go away, and things will go back to normal.’ We made the decision that this is the new economy and we have to exist within it. It may never be what it was before because there was a perfect storm in ‘09, and you’ve got different technology, you’ve got a different generation of buyers coming into the market, you’ve got a whole lot of things that happened at the same time that mean it’s not going to be what it was before. I think we’ll be lucky if it doesn’t get worse.”

Such a realistic yet persevering attitude is necessary to compete both in the greater economic situation and among the local competition.

“Really, our competition is not just the big-box stores. It’s the gas station. It’s Walgreens. It’s anywhere where people can spend money. Chestertown is rural, but I think pretty much the majority of the population goes to Dover, goes to Annapolis, goes to Middletown, shops on Amazon. Certainly that has changed over the years, too.”

“What we’ve done over the years, is just focus on what we do, on our business. We try to do what we do well. We try not to add any extra arms. For instance, we don’t provide any landscape service, and we probably never will. That’s just not what we do.”

The Starkeys keep Kingstown FHG modernized. On a smaller scale, they employ many of the data-collection strategies that make the big-box retailers so successful.

“We’ve really watched our inventory. We have a great computer system that allows us to see what’s selling, what isn’t. If it’s not we get rid of it and move on. We’ve looked at our product diversity over the years and we’ve gotten out of some things that we used to be into. Then we concentrated more on areas that are growing. We shop around. We try to get quality products at good prices.”

“Our business model is different than a big-box store. Our product selection is different. They’re going for the most popular items and buying a lot of them. Just because something is the most popular doesn’t mean it’s the best. It’s just what is the most popular.”

Liz explains that she wants customers to buy the products that will work best for their projects, not just whatever they can find the most of for the lowest price. Kingstown FHG hosts educational events in order to provide people with this knowledge.

“The second Tuesday of every month we have a horticultural club that is open to the public — free talks, and a different topic every time. Sometimes we bring in outside speakers, sometimes we visit other peoples’ gardens, sometimes we go, say, to Longwood Gardens. That’s at the plant end. On the animal end, we hold a horse meeting. We usually have a vet who talks about a subject of horse health, and then we try to bring in a nutritional piece. In the last few years we’ve been getting more into the show animals. This year we had a talk down at the QAC fairgrounds, and we had fifty people show up. That drew a crowd out of Delaware, out of many places.”

“We’re not just for Kent and Queen Anne’s County. Our customer base does go into Caroline County. When people come and visit Chestertown, we’re right at the gateway. We get a lot of people from out of town who have their kids here in College or are here for the weekend.”

Liz claims that they are smart about which products they carry and negotiating price and volume with their suppliers so that they can compete.

“Happily, we have customers with whom it’s not just all about price. Especially with feed. The commodity prices have gone up due to the drought in the midwest. That happened several months ago. We saw the price of livestock and horse feed go up a dollar, two dollars just in a week. It’s historical. That just didn’t happen before. We’ve lost some people who shopped on price. Often, though, if that’s the only reason they’re coming to you, those aren’t really the customers you want to go after.”

To illustrate how the employees’ product knowledge and the policy of educating the customer can benefit the customer, Liz gave the example of Roundup. Monsanto lost the patent for Roundup, so there are now generic brands of the same chemical that cost much less. Most customers don’t know about this, and big-box retailers carry Roundup because it is the most popular and also more expensive. Employees at Kingstown FHG tell customers about the generic brand, saving them money.

Liz emphasizes how important it has been for them to use a local bank that knows them, their business, and the area.

“We’ve used a small local bank, Peoples Bank. That has been wonderful. They’ve been wonderful to us, they’ve believed in us, and they’ve seen us through the good and the bad times over the last fifteen years. We don’t really fit in a box. It’s a good problem to have, to grow. But it costs money, and Peoples Bank cares, they’re right here, they can come and see what you’re doing. Some of the decision makers shop here. I think that they just have more of an understanding of our business and really they have the ability to make individual decisions, whereas a bigger institution doesn’t necessarily have as much flexibility.”

“We try to support local community activities as much as we can. I always hate to say no when somebody wants a donation. We probably say yes to ninety percent of requests. Anything from Hospice to schools to county fairs. Having said that, certainly it helps if they are customers here as well, so that you are supporting each other.”

The success of Kingstown Farm, Home & Garden is clear: Liz and Chris Starkey and their employees are not content to view themselves as victims of economic shifts or the muscle of large corporations. They continue to adapt the business to the local market ecosystem, filling the needs specific to the community.

“We do feel blessed, but at the same time it’s been a lot of hard work. A lot of our business is our employees, and their knowledge, and their hard work, and their dedication, and their attitudes, that have made the business what it is.”

by Jack Elliott