A small boy with gray sweatpants, a white T-shirt and unkempt hair timidly places two boxes of Yu-Gi-Oh cards on the glass counter.

“I’m not really buying these anymore,” explains Paul Burdick, owner of the game and card shop Spellbinders on West Main Street. “Nobody is really collecting these anymore. But if you want to look around, maybe we can trade.”

Disheartened, the boy peruses the store’s merchandise until he finds what he wants: Magic cards. Burdick strikes a deal with the boy- — he offers 10 packs of Magic cards for the two boxes of Yu-Gi-Oh cards.

“I wanted to give the kid the best offer,” Burdick says after the boy and his mother left the store with its cluttered, yet organized, crates and shelves.

Spellbinders, which has been in Kent for 18 years, is just one of the specialty shops in the Kent area, and Burdick says his shop and others survive because they have certain qualities that large corporations do not. Such qualities include finding the store’s niche, offering special services and allowing the store’s personality to reflect its owner’s.

finding a niche
On Main Street, Einstein’s Attic gives the feeling of traveling back through time. Bell-bottoms and hip-huggers hang on the clothes rack, and fedoras decorate the walls. Copies of Rolling Stone from the mid-1980s sit on the end table.

That’s the atmosphere co-owner Gretchen Trout was going for- — the feeling of stepping into a time warp.

“It’s largely different than any other store,” she says. “We’re trying to fill a niche that no one else is filling.”

That niche is catering to the retro tastes of Kent State students, who make up 70 percent of her business. She provides affordable clothing and items students can use to personalize their dorms or apartments.

Becky Adams, junior visual journalism major, has a collection of goods from Einstein’s, including clothing, rugs and candles.

“It gives downtown Kent an even quirkier feel,” Adams says. “Their crazy retro furniture and funky lamps hanging in the front window seem to beckon to me while I’m walking down the street.

“The store has a warm atmosphere. It’s like walking into the living room or closet of a very hip aunt who is stuck in the ’70s.”

Although Trout says she normally gets most of her inventory from estate auctions, some community residents also have donated items. She and her business partner Sherry Dakes clean and sanitize all the items before selling them, which includes laundering the clothes and spraying furniture with detergents. The store is closed Sundays and Mondays so they can go to auctions and clean the furniture.

Trout says it’s sometimes difficult to make a profit, but she thinks the students appreciate it. She prefers the small businesses in town over large corporations.

“They don’t have an interest in Kent,” she says. “They have interest in the bottom line.”