The outsourcing of retail exchanges from real-life experience to internet transaction is nothing new. Fast delivery, no-hassle buying, unlimited options, and 24/7 access all appeal to busy 21st century consumers. According to Capital One Shopping Research and U.S. Census Bureau data, e-commerce sales increased 15.2 percent in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023 for a total spend of $320 billion.
One thing the Amazon delivery truck can’t bring to your doorstep, however, is community—and that’s increasingly in demand. Locally owned brick-and-mortar stores attract shoppers to neighborhood business districts, creating activity and community, and offer person-to-person contact in a world that increasingly dehumanizes retail transactions. Think of them as analog survivors in the digital landscape.
“We try to treat everyone who comes in here like they’re our friend,” says Suzy King, co-founder and co-owner of Handzy Shop + Studio along with friend Brittney Braemer (King is on the left above). “That’s the vibe we’re going for. It’s a friend-based business.”

Braemer echoes her sentiment. “We want our customers to feel that we are professional and knowledgeable but also approachable and able to give advice,” she says. “I hope when you come in here you don’t just feel sold to.”
Friends since their design school days at DAAP, the pair launched Handzy as a design studio where they could create together, before officially opening as a retail storefront in Covington in 2016. The store stocks a variety of goods primarily catering to women, including greeting cards, clothing, earrings, candles, kitchen items, and more.
Handzy was an in-person-only shop initially, but they eventually added online shopping. “That was always our vision for Handzy, being an in-real-life place,” says King. “Our strengths lie in placemaking and hosting a space.”
Handzy offers creative workshops and in-store events that emphasize the in-real-life shopping experience. The business added a coffee bar called Goose Girl inside the store and recently merged its kid-friendly wing, Gumdrop, into the store proper. Taken together, these elements create the pair’s differentiating factor: intimacy.
“The idea we always talk about is tangible sources of joy to wear and share,” says Braemer. “From the very beginning, we liked the idea of gifting or growing or maintaining relationships through gifting, or sentiments like that. Gifting is both of our love languages. That’s just innate within us. We’re trying to create a space for people who also embrace those feelings.”
Photograph by Andrew Doench

Fern, a plant shop on Hamilton Avenue in College Hill, started with a similar concept as Handzy. “I really just wanted to be a design space where people were intentionally buying plants to bring into their home, but then also like a really trustworthy resource for providing care information for plants,” says founder and owner Megan Strasser.
The store opened in 2014 with a focus on arid and tropical indoor house plants. There were far fewer options for buying houseplants in Cincinnati back then, mostly big garden centers like Home Depot or Lowe’s or other national chains like IKEA. Instead, Fern offers a personalized plant attention not found with those large retailers.
“The benefit of buying plants from us is we handpick,” says Strasser. “We are examining leaves and soil of every plant we bring into the shop, hoping that we’re not going not bringing pests into the store. So when customers come in, they aren’t buying plants that are already compromised or in some amount of distress.”
Plants range from ficus trees to philodendrons to succulents to ZZ plants, and the store also carries handmade ceramics, small-batch home goods, candles, cards, and more. “Plants make people happy,” says Strasser. “There’s a lot to say about having something you’re caring for and the challenge of success with it. It’s why I say the plant care component is so important. People come in and they say, like, I kill everything. I don’t have a green thumb. I’ll tell them, You just don’t have the right plants. Let’s find out what will work in your space and work with your lifestyle. That’s really rewarding when it’s done right and done well.”
When COVID struck, Fern had a fire sale of every plant in the shop. Times were uncertain, but Strasser found that plant sales remained steady. Research from the National Gardening Association found that total spending on indoor houseplant gardening increased by $360 million, from $1.31 billion to $1.67 billion, between 2019 and 2020. That number grew to $2.17 billion in 2021.
“We made a decision to open a second space in Walnut Hills due to this post-COVID plant boom, because we were like, This is a great direction,” says Strasser. “It was the right space offered to me, and I liked the Walnut Hills neighborhood because it was similar to College Hill. And then the market corrected a little bit.”
Fern’s second location, with more staff and a higher overhead, struggled during the pandemic recession and eventually closed. Handzy faced a similar experience running storefronts in downtown Cincinnati and in Norwood at Factory 52 in addition to the original Covington shop.
Handzy’s Fourth Street location downtown opened at the beginning of 2020 but closed in 2022. The owners exited Factory 52 in June 2024 after just one year there. They’ve rolled with the economic punches, refocusing efforts on their flagship store. “Why spread ourselves thin when we can go deeper here in Covington and kind of dig our heels in and grow roots in the place where we live and have been successful from the very beginning?” Braemer asks.
Strasser made the best of her stressful situation as well. She was able to pivot the model of her Walnut Hills location to a different passion, focusing on gatherings and event hosting and aptly naming it Hoste. The original Fern location remains focused on plants.

Joy and Matt’s Bookshop also focuses on one product—in their case, books. The shop opened in 2021 at 1515 Vine Street before moving to a larger space at 915 Vine in 2024. There are more than 5,000 books on the shelves in a wide variety of genres. The staff scour reviews and read galleys to select books, order directly from publishers, and occasionally purchase used books.
“It’s a labor of love,” says Matt Stonecash, who opened the store with partner Haixia “Joy” Niu. “Being able to advise people and kind of untangle the massive mess of books that comes out every year and help them navigate what’s good and what makes sense for that person is how we measure success.”
In the larger space, Stonecash and Niu are able to host more book-related events, like readings and book discussions by authors. They have a number of regular customers and, in order to meet demand, added new shelves in the summer. “There are people who come into the store and know exactly what they want,” says Stonecash. “There are people who talk about all the books, and then there are people who want to be left alone. You want to leave the door open to all of those people and whatever experience they’re looking for. We always try to just greet people and make sure they feel welcome.”
And while Amazon may have a 67 percent market share when it comes to selling books, Stonecash and Niu aren’t deterred. “As far as other bookstores are concerned, I feel like we’re in this together, because Amazon is so huge and online is so huge,” says Stonecash. “There’s a clear distinction in the shopping experience between online or buying the book somewhere else versus buying it at an independent bookstore where you’re able to talk to someone about that book. We enjoy providing a space that’s been carefully looked after and carefully organized to help people navigate this body of products that’s a little bit more complex.”

The evolution of Shake It Records is similar to Joy and Matt’s Bookshop, though it predates them by about 20 years. Originally opened in a small space on Hamilton Avenue in Northside in 1999, the store moved to its current two-floor spot in 2001. Encompassing more than 3,200 square feet, Shake It is filled to the brim with records, CDs, books, and music ephemera. People come from across the city and around the world to shop the extensive collection of both new and used records.
“Most people who come in on a regular basis might be looking for one or two new releases, but they’re also going to shop the used records and see what we just put out,” says Jim Blase, co-owner with his brother, Darren. “You constantly have to keep, as much as you can, a fresh batch of product in the used bin, because that’s how a record store differentiates itself from buying online or going to Target or whatever.”
The Blase brothers source their used records primarily from private collections people contact them about selling and occasionally from stores that are closing. They also stock new music, particularly special albums and singles released exclusively to independent record stores. The basement level is all books, with many recent acquisitions from the closing sale of Duttenhofer’s in Clifton Heights.
“There’s a small segment of the population that still wants physical media,” says Blase. “They still want to touch it and hold it and own it, because on iTunes or whatever you don’t really own the music—you’re renting it for a while. And then there’s a collectability angle to records for some people, but our customers care less about whether a certain record has value or not and more about owning the thing.”
Blase says the physical nature of handling and playing vinyl albums and singles is a big draw for people visiting his shop. “There’s even more of a connection because you have to participate in playing records,” he says. “You have to take the record out of the sleeve and put it on the turntable and place the needle on it, and you see where the sound comes from. Plus an album cover is a piece of art.”
In contrast to other businesses, Shake It is consciously moving away from selling as much of their material online. “It’s a lot of extra work and a lot of extra expense when you’re shipping products to online buyers, and you have to charge for that,” says Blase. “We had to do that during the pandemic, but ever since we reopened we’ve slowly gotten away from
that. We don’t really do much business online in terms of selling new records, because you can usually find it cheaper at Target or Amazon. That change hasn’t affected our bottom line at all.”

Cameron Shafer, owner and founder of OTO Supply Co. in Norwood, is also interested in helping his shoppers capture a unique in-person shopping experience with its screenprinted and embroidered apparel, branded apparel, and promotional products. “We’re focused on brick-and-mortar experiences,” he says. “We’re a champion for the in-person merch-buying experience and customer service.”
Shafer cut his business teeth in past positions with Luxxotica and Nielsen Research Group, and he’s interested in the concept of vertical integration. OTO has adopted some shades of that model; where the company previously outsourced decal and vinyl work, it’s now acquired machinery to bring that manufacturing in-house. They weren’t able to handle large-quantity orders on their manual printing press, but new printing equipment can handle any size run.
Those improvements allowed OTO to partner with the Cincinnati Regional Chamber in 2024 to produce branded BLINK and Oktoberfest apparel that was available only on-site at the events. “The conversations we had on both of those events with the Chamber kept coming back to one question: How do we capture and promote the live experience?” says Shafer. “We wanted to try to capture those event connections that people feel really strongly about. Event merch is commemorative. It makes it more special if you can only get the merch at the event versus, Hey, I can buy this sweatshirt online. Why would I do that?”
And much like Shake It Records, Shafer wants to bring non-event-specific purchasing back in-person, too. “Being able to simply put a purchase in a paper bag and hand it across the counter, that’s the really nice thing when you go and buy something in an actual store,” he says. “I love the whole brick-and-mortar experience, because you get instant gratification like, I can buy that shirt. And as a business, we aren’t creating so much waste and charging unnecessary dollars. That’s kind of a fringe benefit I always think about.”
Blase agrees. “It’s really fulfilling to be lucky enough to create a business that’s lasted and that people have a warm feeling about,” he says. “That just adds a lot to your own personal self-worth, to be honest. There’s a psychological impact of people leaving our store with a smile. Whether it’s records or whatever you’re selling, what you’re ultimately selling is good warm feelings. That’s the number one thing.”