In a place as bustling as UCLA, students and residents may think
any business in the nearby area is bound to succeed.
But in the case of Modernbook and many other stores forced to
close recently, a success story was not in the cards.
This trend of retail stores closing has been attributed by some
people to the lack of support for those types of stores in
Westwood.
“I feel that the people that live in the vicinity of
Westwood don’t support the retail in Westwood,” said
Mark Pinsukanjana, co-owner of Modernbook, which sold art and books
about fashion, photography, design and architecture.
People who live in the area do not bring money into the Village
because they don’t shop in the area, said Pinsukanjana.
This sentiment is not felt by all retail business owners in
Westwood, and some say the majority of their business comes from
the locals.
“I’d say that most of our customers are the
students, and mothers who are (Westwood) residents,” said May
Hasso, owner of Monica’s on Broxton Avenue.
Hasso’s business has been doing well, and she believes
that the opening of the Whole Foods Market in February will
further improve the conditions for retail.
Modernbook’s closure in Westwood boiled down to a simple
problem that Hasso’s store is not experiencing.
“People didn’t buy enough,” said co-owner of
Modernbook, Bryan Yedinak.
Modernbook in Westwood was a branch of Yedinak and
Pinsukanjana’s main store in Palo Alto, home to Stanford
University. The original Modernbook has been thriving and bringing
in sales for three years, while the Westwood chain floundered for a
little over a year before permanently closing.
Most of the customers for the bookstore’s Westwood branch
were professionals and businesses that wanted to buy art from the
gallery, Yedinak said.
“If students came in, they weren’t buying
anything,” Yedinak said.
Even the Palo Alto store does not receive much support from
students, Pinsukanjana said.
The co-owners did not depend on, or expect, a large student base
because they considered the student budget and realized that the
books could be out of their price range.
Other retail stores in Westwood with chains elsewhere may
experience mediocre demand for their merchandise compared to their
other locations.
Aahs!, a chain store that sells gift items, gets some support
from Village residents, but not enough. The Westwood location is
not the chain’s best, said Jack Sing, owner of the Westwood
branch of Aahs!
Both Sing and Pinsukanjana cited a lack of larger, well-known
retail stores in the Village as one of the factors keeping retail
shoppers away.
Yedinak and Pinsukanjana said traffic was their main concern in
terms of building a customer base.
“We need exposure to the street,” Yedinak said.
The owners are considering branching out in the Los Angeles area
again, with this factor in mind, but they will not be returning to
West Los Angeles.
“It’s a dying Village … in terms of retail. Look
around,” said Yedinak.