Herd mentality | A Wiscasset alpaca farmer takes retail to a new level
Photo/ Tim Greenway
Skip Taylor plans to bring alpaca wear to Bath and beyond
For a year, Skip Taylor sat in his car on Front Street in Bath, notebook in hand, and waited and watched.
“I watch people and, more importantly, I count [shopping] bags,” he says. “I make up a little chart, I go at different days, at different times. I do at least an hour.”
Sometimes he’d even chat up strangers, asking where they’d come from. After a while, Taylor made up his mind: This was the spot to grow a business.
Taylor and his wife, Judi, are opening their first satellite store there in November, bringing luxury alpaca wear to a street already bustling with shops selling antiques, gifts, books, cookware, toys and jewelry.
The couple has run Winters Gone Farm and Alpaca Store on Route 218 in Wiscasset for years. They bill themselves as “New England’s Most Popular Alpaca Farm,” with 16,000 visitors last year and nearly $400,000 in sales from the small on-site shop. Their own alpaca, about 20 head, have attracted guests and served as educational tools for anyone curious about the furry, four-legged animals. Inventory for sale in the shop — soft sweaters, scarves, jackets and throws — relies largely on Judi’s designs, South American alpaca fleece and elbow grease. The couple makes regular trips and works directly with three Peruvian manufacturers.
The farm has been fun, Taylor says, but there’s a hitch: The alpacas have maybe been too much of a draw. Lots of visitors came for the animals and didn’t spend in the shop.
Taylor says he likes that Front Street was named one of America’s top 10 streets last year by the American Planning Association, and he’s been impressed by an active chamber of commerce that’s worked to bring cruise ship traffic to the little downtown. “Those are people that fit the demographics, usually in their 40s and 50s with a reasonable amount of spending income,” he says.
He’ll open the 1,000-square-foot boutique in time to capitalize on Christmas traffic, stocking all-alpaca hats, gloves, sweaters, shawls, pea coats, leggings, “anything you can imagine short of undergarments,” he says.
A decade ago, alpaca sweaters had a reputation for being bulky, hand-knit and very South American-looking, Taylor says. “It doesn’t look Peruvian or Brazilian or anything else anymore,” he says of the designs. And alpaca is seven times warmer than wool, hypoallergenic and soft as cashmere.
He’ll benefit, Taylor says, from experienced, high-end shoppers. A sweater similar to one that Winters Gone charges $110 for can sell at Neiman Marcus for $350. For that reason, the Taylors already have an eye toward further expansion. The next store is set to open in either Vail or Breckenridge. “We think that our stores would do even better in a resort area, particularly in a ski area,” Taylor says.
Beyond that, they’re thinking even bigger, envisioning a series of manager-owned stores that use the Winters Gone name and designs in exchange for a small mark-up on wholesale costs. A sweater he and his wife buy for $50 group members would buy for $55. Four dollars would go to the Taylors and $1 to an advertising account that would benefit all group members. It would be up to new store owners to decide what they want to charge for that $55 sweater. In Wiscasset, their mark-up is 110% to 120%, he says.
Taylor says he’d like to see the Bath store make up to $750,000 in sales by the end of its second year. Their farm-based shop closes each year from January to May. Next spring, with six months of sales at the new enterprise on the books, Taylor said he and his wife will decide whether to re-open the farm store for the season or go all-in with Bath.
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