Friday, February 4, 2005 11:00 AM CST
Burned by the Internet
By HERB MEEKER, Staff Writer
Dave Barrett believes his dream of owning his own business went up in smoke, thanks to the Internet.
The Darby Pipe Shop on Broadway Avenue closed Monday after 60 years of selling tobacco products and pipes in Mattoon. Barrett was the fourth owner of the business that had relocated three times over the decades.
The 50-year-old Barrett was thanking old customers for their loyalty late last week and promising to share his "recipes" for pipe tobacco with a pipe shop in Champaign. Bearded and stout, he choked up after one of the customers offered a hearty farewell.
"I wanted to make sure my customers could still get what they wanted," Barrett said, pointing to glass jars nearly empty of tobacco with labels reading Dutchflake, Royal Darby and Havana Ribbon.
Some of the recipes date back to the original owner, Royal Aten, who operated the shop on the east end of the business district in Mattoon.
The business also moved a few doors down several years ago from the corner of 19th Street and Broadway.
"One guy came in and bought eight pounds of what he was smoking," said Barrett of the loyalty to the pipe blends.
He has had a run on his inventory, including cigars, but for months his business was fading away. Barrett points toward Internet shopping as being too habit-forming for smokers.
"If they were looking for a particular brand of cigar out there then they might come into my place and just see 30 different boxes. That was a much smaller selection than what they could find on the Internet," Barrett said.
Besides, the cyber-smokers did not have to leave the house, Barrett said. "That really puts a hurt on small businesses like mine," he said.
The power of the Internet business has increased several fold in the last few years. Forester Research predicts that United States online retail sales will reach $229 billion by 2008. If true, that would amount to 10 percent of all U.S. retail sales.
But is the Internet killing off small businesses? Actually, there are many cases of smaller business entities enhancing their sales through Internet orders.
"Overall, the Internet can be a boon to business," said Todd Maisch, vice president of governmental affairs with the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce. "For every business that has been hurt by competition from the Internet, others are benefiting from more efficient operations."
Maisch said small business owners should seek qualified consultants on setting up online business operation, no matter the size. "They need to look at the Internet as an opportunity, not a threat."
Barrett said his business might have also suffered from new smokers not learning to exhale. The art of smoking pipes and cigars is not inhaling.
"With cigarettes, inhaling is a very bad habit to break," said Barrett. He first picked up smoking pipes, not cigarettes, during his teen years while camping with friends on the Kaskaskia River near Sullivan, his hometown.
"We did it to keep the ‘skeeters' off us," Barrett said.
Of course, smoking pipes and cigars is a deliberative process, compared to cigarette smoking.
"You need some time to smoke them. You just don't take a break out back," Barrett said.
Time is not a worry for him now. He is moving back to Sullivan, where he might do some fishing.
Contact Herb Meeker at hmeeker@jg-tc.com or 238-6869.
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