Business

‘Time Is of the Essence’: Severed Ties on Cherry Street Launches E-Commerce Channel

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A New Canaan business for 40 years, Severed Ties Antiques & Quality Consignments on Cherry Street carries some 10,000 individual items at any given time—many of those on-site, and otherwise fetch-able by truck for customers who want to “touch, see and feel” what they’re buying, according to owner Ginger Craft. Yet for Craft, that once essential shopping experience—touching, seeing and feeling a purchase—has taken a backseat for a new generation of consumers, for whom convenience and speed are higher priorities. Weeks ago, just three years after launching a website of any kind, Craft opened up an ecommerce channel on Severed Ties—which now sells its high-end products directly through the website (packaging included). “The young kids’ time is of the essence, so you don’t see as much walk-through traffic,” Craft said on a recent afternoon as a pair of first-time customers entered her brightly lit shop, a colorful and busy collection of furniture, jewelry, antiques, rugs, china, crystal, art, silver and accessories. “So we are trying to make it as convenient as possible.”

Opening up an online portion to her store also has allowed Craft to boost the reach of her inventory (“We’re trying to increase the volume by going online”), appealing to a wider range of buyer and by creating an Internet channel, meeting prospective customers where they are.

News

Truck Fire on East Avenue: Too Much Damage to Determine Cause

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It isn’t clear what caused the fire in the “box” of a Salvation Army truck as it idled at a light on East Avenue just below Forest Street around noon Thursday. According to Fire Marshal Fred Baker, the drivers had picked up a load of household goods—clothing and furniture—in Weston earlier in the day, and had no idea how the fire started. “It appears to have started in the front of the ‘box,’ but there was too much destruction to determine a specific cause,” Baker said. No one was hurt in the blaze, officials say. New Canaan’s John Walsh said he was walking along East Avenue at 12 p.m. when the truck pulled up next to him and he glimpsed a flash of orange on top of it.

Business

Stamford Man Opens Kids Home Furnishings at 106 Main

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Here’s one way that Seth Berger—a Stamford native, father of two and 34-year volunteer firefighter—describes the mission of his longtime family business: Protecting against the cold, impersonal commoditization of baby and children’s furniture. Berger represents the third generation in his family to sell high-end cribs, dressers, desks and rocking and upholstery chairs, and the purchase of those items long had been a meaningful family occasion. “Until the Internet, that was the case,” Berger said Monday afternoon at Kids Home Furnishings in downtown New Canaan, sitting by a solid beech baby dresser from Romania. The brightly lit, approximately 2,500-square-foot shop opened this spring at 106 Main St.—next door to Connecticut Muffin and toward the corner, in what many think of as the “Pop-up Store” for its prior occupants. “You went to the one person that knew this merchandise.