Kindred Fair Trade in Santa Rosa to close due to decreased foot traffic from COVID-19

Kindred Fair Trade, which has been a downtown Santa Rosa staple since 2002, is closing on Jan. 30 due to a decrease in foot traffic attributed to the pandemic.

Store owner, Julie Montgomery, said she will pivot to operating online only as she cannot wait for foot traffic to eventually return to the store’s Fourth Street location.

Montgomery, who has owned Kindred Fair Trade for more than four years, said she waited until after the holiday season to make the decision to close the brick-and-mortar store, which specializes in humanely sourced crafts and clothing from around the world.

She said she opted to close even after receiving rent deferments from her landlord and a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan that has buoyed her business since the onset of the pandemic 21 months ago.

Montgomery said because she didn’t want to get into worse financial straits and opted instead for the online store she started at the beginning of the pandemic.

“I could still keep it going, but I don’t want to just keep it going. Downtown is not going to return to any sort of vibrancy within the timeline that I would need it to,” Montgomery said. “I was trying to calculate my future, trying to predict when things would come back and how long it would take. What it would look like and what I would have to do until that happens?”

Kindred Fair Trade’s sales were down about 40% in 2020 from 2019 and the past year’s revenue was less than 20% from the 2019 level.

In recent years, the store also has relied on four part-time workers.

In the end, Montgomery said, she didn’t want to be in a situation like Philippe Colasse who had to close his Larkfield restaurant in October as he could not run his crepe shop by himself.

“I don’t want to have to cut. I don’t want to have to wonder by myself,” she said.

Montgomery said she applauded efforts by the Downtown Action Organization and the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce to attract visitors. She pointed to the installation, this past fall, of the synthetic ice skating rink at Old Courthouse Square in addition to movie nights that were held this past summer.

Despite those efforts, she said she does not foresee the amount of downtown visitors returning to pre-pandemic levels in the near term.

“To really be viable we need the foot traffic from the downtown life; visitors; tourists; and big events. All of those things have to work together to make this a successful store,” she said.

The focus on downtown redevelopment will be on attracting more housing to the area that will lead to more shoppers, said Peter Rumble, chief executive officer of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber. Such proposed projects that could break ground this year include the 1 Santa Rosa Avenue complex and the Cornerstone project on Mendocino Avenue.

“It’s about really needing more foot traffic and more people downtown. And the best way to do that is through having people live downtown,” Rumble said.

You can reach Staff Writer Bill Swindell at 707-521-5233 or bill.swindell@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @BillSwindell.