SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Tucked away next to the food court of the Viewmont Mall is NEPA Crafters Unite.<\/p>\n
After decades of building houses, Gary Dotter and his wife got into the craft business and 16 years later, they’re still showing off NEPA\u2019s creative crafts.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife is the crafter in the family,” explained Dotter. “I\u2019m not a crafter. I can sell anything because I don\u2019t sell a product. I hate car salesmen. I sell an atmosphere. I can talk to anybody, joke with anybody, I make them feel comfortable. When people are comfortable, this stuff sells itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
They sell a hodgepodge of gifts, decorations, and handcrafted goods from nearly 40 vendors and pride themselves on their low prices.<\/p>\n
They have a rule: only one vendor per type of item. No competition and vendor\u2019s getting 70 percent of the revenue has led to loyal crafters stocking their shelves for years \u2013 and a waitlist of suppliers for every item. The other 30 percent goes to paying the rent for the storefront and the store’s help, the only crafts the Dotter’s make money on are the ones they themselves created in the store.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not pushing money to get money,” said Dotter. “I make my money selling my stuff. I try to keep the rent down as low as possible, and that\u2019s what works. It\u2019s worked for 16 years; I\u2019m not changing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it ain\u2019t broke.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cExactly. I\u2019m not the government!”<\/p>\n
And it’s not only a hit with the vendors; the low prices and wide variety have led to loyal customers coming back consistently. The in-person shoppers are a trend across the board, the mall telling us that it\u2019s seen increased foot traffic every year since the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that shoppers want to feel and touch the items that they\u2019re buying,” said Viewmont Mall property management associate Rosemary Bohenek. “It\u2019s different than online shopping where you\u2019re just on the computer screen and you don\u2019t get to try things on and really experience the shopping.<\/p>\n
NEPA Crafters Unite is a great place to some holiday stocking stuffers but also shows the strength of small business and in person shopping \u2013 and if it was up to Gary \u2013 he\u2019d do it forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love it. My customers come back all the time, and the store will continue that way for as long as I\u2019m around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Tucked away next to the food court of the Viewmont Mall is NEPA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-59624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}