Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 12, 1994 TAG: 9407130057
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: C-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MELISSA CURTIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Cynthia Buckner-Louthen is learning Spanish from a tutor. It is a skill she needs when she goes to Guatemala in search of folk art to stock her new Roanoke shop, Off the Beaten Path.
It is an appropriate name considering the wares come from remote villages in the Central American country.
Louthen, who opened her shop three weeks ago above the food court in the Roanoke City Market Building, traveled around Guatemala for seven weeks buying folk art pieces. She returned in May with chairs, cupboards, masks, hammocks, trunks, pillows and other decorative, handmade wares.
Shoppers can spend anywhere from $10 for a jade-colored figurine or $55 for a hand-painted chair to $390 for a hand-painted cupboard in the store, which is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Louthen said she will extend her hours if business increases.)
She described the furniture and other merchandise as unique and said most of the customers who would want to buy a brightly painted Guatemalan mask or a real stuffed frog - her best seller so far - are "people that really like unusual things."
Louthen, who previously operated a clothing store, Gone Coco, on the ground floor of the market building, almost named her new shop The Conversation Piece. That's because she considers much of her merchandise to be accent pieces. Few people would want to decorate an entire room with her brightly colored folk art, she said.
"Some people have formal taste but like one unusual piece," she said.
The unusual pieces Louthen is selling were not easily discovered. Accompanied by her 2-year-old daughter, Morgan, and an interpreter, she traveled to nine villages in western Guatemala, some without running water or electricity, to find just what she wanted.
"I searched for things," she said. "They didn't just fall into my lap."
Some of the furniture, including little wooden chairs and trunks, came out of the houses of villagers.
"They don't have much money, so they're more than willing to sell their furniture," Louthen said. "They don't grow attached to their belongings like Americans do."
In August, she will return to Guatemala for about two weeks to buy smaller items that can serve as Christmas or holiday gifts.
After the holidays, she will close the shop and return to Guatemala for four months to buy more furniture. If business is good through Christmas, she will reopen upon returning.
So far, she is a little worried.
"It's been slow. I haven't sold a lot of big pieces," she said. "I just ask everybody who comes in the door, 'Please tell your friends.'"
Louthen's obscure location, tucked away above the market building's busy food court, is part of the problem.
"People told me if I made it upstairs in the market I'd be breaking the tradition," she said. "Nobody knows I'm up here. I just don't get the walk-through traffic."
Not wanting to be tied to a yearlong lease for a street-level store, Louthen is keeping her fingers crossed and hoping people discover her wares in "Off the Beaten Path."
by CNB