Retail

I'm a bit baffled by the retail scene in Daugavpils. There seem to be a preponderance of certain types of stores and a dearth of others. To be fair, my context here is the American retail scene, so I may be comparing apples and oranges. But in a blog that's at least in part about cultural differences, that kind of comparison is OK.

I am first surprised -- no, actually, astonished would be a better word -- by the enormous, and I mean enormous number of clothing stores. Many of them are very small stores, even smaller than boutiques, so that ten of them might equal one clothing store in the States. Still, they are everywhere. The mall Ditton Nams has a large hangar-like area that is filled with hundreds of small retailers selling cheap clothing, reportedly much of it imported from Poland and, I presume, points east. It's rather like being dropped into a Russian-speaking souk. I don't entirely know what to make of this. Daugavpils' population is only about 100,000, so there simply isn't enough market here for the number of clothing stores. Nor do I see people constantly wearing new clothes. So what is going on here?

Unless they are buying new clothes and giving the old stuff away to what we call thrift stores -- that is, secondhand shops. There are a huge number of these as well, and they deal almost exclusively with clothing and textiles; none of that housewares stuff or furniture that you might see in a typical American thrift. I can walk to fifteen different ones in about as many minutes.

Having been to Rīga twice now, I can say pretty confidently that Rīga is where the money is at in Latvia. Daugavpils is where it isn't, for the most part. Though there are as a wealthy neighborhood out by the lake that's in town, this part of Latvia is poorer than the rest of it, being rural farmland and a bit off the beaten track. This might explain all the clothing and thrift stores: people put their money where it can be seen, literally on their backs, and can do so on the cheap. I don't say this as a slam at all. Where I come from, Maine, shopping in thrifts is a point of pride. And thrifts in New England are incomparable to the rest of the country -- you can get anything at a Goodwill at 90% off its usual price. And I would point out that people here are not dressed poorly. If anything, Latvians are a surprisingly fashionable lot in ways that I find very pleasing. (More on that later.)

I'm also surprised by the sheer (no pun intended) number of stores that sell curtains. Curtains are in fact a necessity, but it would seem that one or two shops could reasonably serve the entire city. There are at least a dozen, maybe more. I cannot explain this. Nor do I totally understand the number of shoe repair stores, not to mention shoe stores. Again, these are very small stores, so that might explain part of the reason there are so many of them. But how many curtains can one buy? If you have four windows in your flat, the answer would seem to be four pair. Is there something here I do not understand?

On the other hand, I have not seen a computer store anywhere. (A computer repair store, I think so, though I haven't gone in to see exactly what they do or sell.) I find it hard to buy housewares. The big super- and hypermarket chains have a housewares section, but it is not very big, and it sells limited kinds of things -- some pots and pans, some linens, and some kitchen tools. It may be that I am used to endless choices in the insanely capitalist system of the United States, where it's assumed that if you can't collect Fiestaware in at least forty colors, none of which are ever allowed to go out of circulation, then life is clearly not worth living. Nor would it be if one could not choose from twenty different kinds of laundry detergent, all of which are distinguished by primarily color and scent and not by their ability to actually do what you are buying it for.

There are a number of bookstores, some that sell Russian books exclusively, but I have yet to see a CD or record store. This probably reflects the fact that music is now streamed and you don't buy music so much as buy the service that provides the music. There are music stores -- a number of them, in fact, that sell and service instruments, which tells me that Latvians are more likely to make music than to simply listen to it.

The supermarkets are really interesting to me. There are so many of them. The big three chains -- Mego, Maxima, and Rimi -- are all within blocks of each other; I can walk to all three of them in fifteen minutes. Even odder to me is there are multiple stores of the same chain within spitting distance from each other. The big Mego is five blocks from a smaller Mego; the big, brand new Maxima is three blocks from a smaller Maxima; the big Rimi is four blocks from the smaller Rimi. (There's also a medium-sized Elvi in town.) Because they are all concentrated in the downtown area, everybody comes here to shop, taking the trams home if they past the railroad tracks that divide the city center from the more residential neighborhoods. How do they all stay in business? They do, clearly, so there are some retail rules in play in Latvia that are baffling to an American.

This post is simply observation. Though I have speculated here and there on how the retail business sector of Daugavpils works, I can't really figure it out. I expect that there are things I am missing or simply can't see because of my American blinders. But I still have to ask: how many hair salons does a medium-sized city really need? Three or four dozen? Because that's how many I can walk to. How many more are there beyond that?