Bliss Home Design at Strawberry Village

First look at Bliss Home Design, which opened recently in the old Smith & Hawken space at Strawberry Village. Clearly a great place to stock up on statues, chandeliers, over-sized everything, and horses' heads.

Cool new retailers entering Marin in 2011

There have been quite a few new store openings (including some very cool regional retailers), and some closings over the last couple of months. Here's a partial list of what's new and what's on the way:

• First, at Marin Country Mart, James Perse and Poppy Store are now open, but Tam Cellars is closing. San Francisco retailer Unionmade  ($225 vintage Levis) has also signed up for a store
• At Strawberry Village there is a new chocolate store, Chocolatier Blue. Also at Strawberry, the ex-Smith and Hawken store has been leased to Bliss Home Design ("sophisticated, dramatic settings for the bedroom")
• Up at Vintage Oaks, DSW Shoe Warehouse has taken over the space previously occupied by Benjamin Franklin Crafts. Other new stores at Vintage Oaks include Subway, Justice and Southern Pacific Smokehouse.
• In Corte Madera, new stores at The Village include Free People, Ann Taylor Loft (relocating from the Town Center) and Restoration Hardware Baby & Child. Coming soon to the Village are Tommy Bahama, J-Crew's Madewell and North Face.
• Lastly, and possibly a victim of the gourmet fro-yo craze, Baskin Robins in downtown Larkspur has closed.

Top Retail Cities in Marin

Continuing our look at the retail sales tax data for Marin County from the California Board of Equalization (great name by the way). The table below shows total sales at retail outlets by city for the years 2006-07. So what is it telling us?

• San Rafael captures the largest slice of retail sales, with $1.3 billion or 38% of sales in Marin in 2007. San Rafael extends over quite a large area, which includes the downtown area, Northgate Mall, the big box retail along 101, Montecito Plaza and Home Depot.
• Novato is the second largest city, with 18% of the total, or $595 million. Most of this is drawn through Vintage Oaks.
• Corte Madera, with sales of $450 million, or 14% of the total, takes third place.
• The city with the greatest increase in sales was San Anselmo, with growth of $9.9 million, or 14% between 2006 and 2007. I don't recall any major retail changes taking place, so I wonder if the change reflects the impact of the floods on New Years Day 2006, which took out many downtown businesses for several weeks.
• Mill Valley also had a good 2007, up $6.9 million or 3.7% in 2007, possibly as a result of new store openings at Strawberry Village.
• Corte Madera recorded the greatest fall in sales over the period, down $4.2 million or 0.9% in 2007. This may reflect refurbishment work at the Town Center (Barnes & Noble) and The Village, which went through a program of renovations in 2007.

The BoE data also provides details of sales by retailer category. Unfortunately, the Board is in the process of changing how it classifies businesses, so we can't do a meaningfull comparison with previous years. I'll publish some charts with this data later this week.

Strawberry Village

Strawberry Village is located on the eastern side of Highway 101 in the Strawberry suburb of Mill Valley. The center is anchored by a 45,000 sq.ft Safeway supermarket and also contains around 120,000 sq.ft of externally-oriented space in several separate buildings.

Originally opened in 1964, the center was owned by the University of California until 2004, then sold and redeveloped. Safeway expanded its store by 15,000 sq.ft and a new main street and plaza were added. The design is Tuscan-inspired, which means red tiled roofs, lemon trees, terracotta pots, oak beams and one or two towers and false turrets in shades of yellow and burnt umber.

The lease-up and opening of stores in the Piazza area has been slow; the last two remaining units are still waiting fit-out nearly two years after construction was completed. The focus of this area was always going to be the eateries, and the two that have opened so far seem to have hit the mark. Pizza Antica is a small-chain family restaurant that has a big open high-ceilinged dining room that gets very noisy. La Boulange is a Bay Area chain of 8-9 French bakery/café/pastry shops. When the weather is good the Plaza is a great place to sit outside for breakfast or lunch. Other eateries at the center include the ever-popular Thep Lela Thai, Harmony, which specializes in Dim Sum, High Tech Burrito, Pasta Pomodoro, Sushi Gourmet and Rain Tree Café. At the southern edge of the center are In-N-Out Burger and Round Table Pizza. There are two separate parts to Strawberry Village. The northern part is the largest section and contains Safeway and all of the remodeled components. The southern part is smaller and comprises mostly financial and professional services. Ideal Stationers is an old-style office supplies store that has been at the center forever and is worth seeking out at the southern end of the center for its eclectic merchandise. The most visible new store at the center is Smith & Hawken. The iconic garden & patio furniture chain originally started trading from a small store in downtown Mill Valley and now occupies an eye-catching 10,000 sq.ft unit with enough room to show its range of adirondaks, firepits and outrageous gazebos. Other stores that are long term tenants at Strawberry include Wolf Camera, Arch Rival, which has a strong following as the place to go to get tennis shoes professionally fitted. World of Sound specializes in high-end home theatre and hi-fi installations. Patrick James West Coast Classics has classic outfits from the likes of Corneliani, Bills Khakis, Tommy Bahama etc. Among the newer stores the common theme is catering to the higher end of the market. Given that the local market is affluent Tiburon & Mill Valley, this is a sensible approach. Nancy Koltes at Home is a small store that showcases the designer’s linens.Nicole Gray & Co. mixes beauty products with gifts and homewares. Other new stores that seem to have found their niche include Woodlands Pet Food & Treats which, in addition to all the pet products also offers dog training and adoption clinics. The adjacent Monkey Business toy store stocks quality products of the kind that all parents would want to buy for their kids if they had the budget. The Spanish Table's niche is all things Spanish, including foods, wines and cookware.Stores that always seem to be busy include Starbucks, New York Bagels (aka the slowest bagel store in the west) and Woody’s frozen yoghurt place. Other stores always seem to be empty, especially the poorly-located Jos A Banks, which sits by itself at the back of the center. Safeway is usually very busy. It was remodeled in 2005 to the latest "lifestyle" format and extended to include bonus services, such as the pharmacy and hot food counter.

The two new stores that are yet to open at the center are Asqews Grill, which is a small Bay Area chain specializing in skewered and barbequed dishes, and Lavande Spa & Boutique, which promotes itself as offering an interesting combination of manicures, pedicures and womens shoes.