Herrins head downtown to fight merchant gap.

Byline: RETAIL NOTEBOOK By Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

Ken and Aimee Herrin have decided to become part of a solution to what they see as the dilemma of downtown Eugene: a business district that has had trouble attracting merchants because of a lack of merchants.

The Herrins have leased a space in the Tiffany Building at Eighth Avenue and Willamette Street, and will move downtown with their growing Letterhead Fine Paper & Gifts shop on June 1.

Letterhead will leave its current store at the Meridian, at 18th Avenue and Willamette, a few days before the downtown store opens.

"It's always been sort of a problem with us," Ken Herrin says. "We'd like to see downtown be more functional and vital. But you can only think about those things and gripe about them for so long, and we figured it was time to put our money where our mouths are."

Which is what the couple have done.

They've leased the space that formerly held the Provenance Gallery, and have settled into a routine of working on a remodel of the new store before and after their workdays at the old one.

"It's not burdensomely expensive," says Ken Herrin, a woodworker before he and his wife - who had experience as an office manager at various businesses - took a collective deep breath and dived into the retail world with Letterhead 4 1/2 years ago.

"Because we don't have the deep pockets to have a whole army of designers and worker bees ... we've been doing pretty much everything ourselves," he says. "We figured, going into it, that it would be about three months of just burning the candle at both ends."

The pair have repainted the interior, and are building display cases and racks for their existing inventory of greeting cards, wrapping paper, journals, photo albums, stationery and gifts, along with new items that will include a line of bath and body products, more gift ideas and an expanded children's section.

The new store will focus on one of the store's mainstays - custom invitations and announcements - with a sitting room that will allow customers to look through samples.

"We're just going to be creating a living room where people can come in and really work through those decisions," Herrin says.

The new store will be almost three times the size of the old one.

It doesn't hurt that the new store comes at a much lower rent per foot than the old one.

"It's certainly more affordable, retail space-wise," Herrin says. "It's almost what we're paying now, but almost three times the square footage.

"That might springboard us to being a more successful business."

Retail Notebook runs Thursdays. Contact Joe Mosley at 338-2384 or [e-mail].