Complementing franchise model
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By Neil B. Armstrong
Yet another independent coffee shop in Masan, South Gyeongsang Province, has closed its doors for the last time. “4/7” was run by four sisters from a local family which, half a century ago, produced seven girls. Four of those seven siblings pooled their wits a couple of years ago to open 4/7.
It was charmingly Spartan in design and also, unfortunately, patrons. So when a multinational coffee shop franchise set up a spacious two-story outlet right across the road from 4/7, well, there must be an algorithm somewhere which calculates the time lag between such an event happening and the demise of the smaller business. 4/7, in spite of its classier décor, more intimate acoustics, superior product, and far more creative management, is going where so many businesses go now when they close down: the route of the beer-and-chicken domestic franchise. It feels like a loss.
Coffee shop franchises do their homework. They set up in locales host to a steady flow of youngish spenders. They camp out in the same international team kit visible in Lakewood, Lisbon, and Linqing. And they operate in a language of familiar images equally decipherable by locals and outsiders wanting home everywhere. In other words, they offer the psychological rewards achieved by the tourist but without the stresses of actual travel. In like manner, the profits which flow through them remain temporarily in a port of call before heading home when they are done.
For despite the part time jobs they provide to the young, and pace stories of the small town man who got rich setting up his town’s sole burger franchise, profits on franchises are a very tight squeeze. Many merely connect their tills to a “supertill” somewhere off in another tax zone, to which the greater portion of earnings flow. But the catch-22 for modern downtowns is that those which have not been re-plumbed with popular chain stores now seem down at heel.
A condition of apparent prosperity is the domination of ubiquitous shop fronts. Franchise stores represent a kind of median of commercial acceptability, and the median, the average, has therefore come to define our perception of good quality. This acknowledgement, in South Korea, was prefigured about a decade ago by crafty local businessmen who opened virtual franchises decked out in the color, design, feel, and look of existing popular chains to the point of litigability. One almost feels nostalgic for a recent yesteryear of JFC and Sunbucks. Replaced in time by their legitimate progenitors, a commercial neighborhood without them is thought to be struggling.
Bucking this trend takes that quality we all like to think we have: the willingness to act on a good idea. One of the three downtown areas in Masan is called Changdong. Primus inter pares during Masan’s relative heydays of the 70s, and 80s, it disappeared into a state of decay just after, coincidentally, Masan city disappeared into a new tri-city union called Changwon. Changdong’s former cachet as a bustling tight knit downtown dissolved into mere smallness. It was now just a warren of traffic free alleyways set around traditional markets, streets of squirming bars, and tiny shoe and clothes shops. That the independent character of Changdong should become a negative feature as the city lost its independent status must have stimulated the excellent idea which has regenerated it. Changdong is now renowned for and distinguished by its “Art Village.”
In contradistinction with the artistic quarters found in bigger cities in the west, little Changdong’s Art Village snakes around the area’s half dozen main streets as a defining character. A hectic major bus thoroughfare will always render Changdong idiosyncratically grotty. But a combination of local authority investment and local artistic input has restored Changdong’s pride, and put a twist on the contemporary idea of what a downtown might comprise.
What we have is a living, breathing organic alternative to the final terminus of the franchise takeover. Or at least a complement which allows local people to infuse their identity in their locale while enjoying the profits. To the naked eye, the whole idea may literally appear as nothing more than a lick of paint. But the variety of its content ― cafes, galleries, pottery classes, an animation graphic design school, terraced eateries ― and the detail of its visual touches ― recherché signage, wall-mounted images of a bygone city, characterful murals ― offer a small, shining star-like improvement on the chain store median. It is a commercial renewal a little above the average, and a possible home for future 4/7s.
The writer is the author of "Korean Straight Lines." He can be contacted at nbarmstrongbook@yahoo.co.uk.