bcbusiness.ca august 2014 BCBusiness 49
Colleen Miller
Owner of BuTTON BuTTON
318 Homer St., Vancouver
E
veryone laughed when I said I wanted to open a button store.
But I'd lived in lots of different countries, and I'd seen button
stores in Europe. As a vintage clothing gal who was into sewing,
I was finding it difficult to find good buttons here in Vancouver.
When I opened in 1995, I signed up for a free 45-minute busi-
ness consultation, because I didn't know anyone who'd been
in the business and I'd never worked in retail. I'd done all my research,
standing on street corners counting traffic at certain times of day, and
I had all my buttons. So I was ready to roll when I met with the consul-
tant, but he just said, "Look. Why don't you just take your buttons and
drive into the Interior, rent a hotel room, put an ad in the paper that
you're there with your buttons and see how it goes." And I said, "I don't
have a car." So he stood up and said, "I just can't waste my time with
you anymore."
It threw me for a loop, and for a week I just stopped everything.
I thought I would just forget the plan, because he's
right. And then I thought, No, he isn't. I really have
confidence, despite nobody else around me having
confidence.
My dad thought it was not a smart idea, and he
wouldn't even talk about it. But when he finally saw
that I was keen, he lent me $20,000, with no interest,
to be paid off after the first two years. I paid it back
frantically. And apart from that, I was never in the red.
My store has been slow but steady. Sooner or later,
you're going to lose a button and have to come in. The
very poor come in, and the very rich come in. There's
one customer, she comes in regularly, with her chauf-
feur waiting outside, and she can spend $1,000 in 10
minutes. You just need her twice a year and it changes
your bottom line. There's also drag queens, brides,
people making jewelry, people making doll clothes,
guys working in leather—and the film industry, thank
God for them! I sell about 12,000 buttons per month,
which includes the mother-of-pearl buttons I sell in
bulk to First Nations for regalia. Each button blanket
takes 500 to 1,000 buttons.
About 20 per cent of my customers are men, and I
didn't expect that at all. If men have lost a button, they
don't know to go to a fabric store. They figure, if you
lose a button, you go to a button store, right?
BUTTON UP Despite a particularly negative
encounter with a consultant in her store's
fledgling days, Colleen Miller has made a
business out of buttons alone.
