Building a Business in San Miguel
One Family’s Resourcefulness and Resilience for Success: John Adam Galeria de Arte & Piel
By Anne Nicolai
June 26, 2009
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San Miguel de Allende
Rebecca Fass requests another agua con hielo at Los Milagros. Her eyes light up as she launches into a description of the leather boot, belt and purse line she is designing for 2010.
“The sample boot has tooling all the way to the top, with Our Lady of Guadalupe painted on the front of the upper. They’re beautiful, but they’re 10,000 pesos, and I want to sell them for less. Most of my customers wear jeans or long skirts that cover the uppers anyway. So I’m tooling just the lower portion and moving Guadalupe to the top of the shoe, where you can see her. That’ll bring them down to half the price.”
Together with her son John Vogel, Rebecca owns John Adam Galeria de Arte & Piel at Canal #9. Having weathered two moves within five years, two name changes, a battle for retention of ownership rights, and a perpetually passive-aggressive relationship between the peso and the dollar, John Adam Galeria (formerly Ren Ellis Leather) has become a fixture within San Miguel de Allende’s retail scene.
The survival of the business has required resilience and resourcefulness—both of which Rebecca Fass possesses in spades.
“We’re willing to make changes on the fly,” says Rebecca. “If artwork or jewelry sells better than leather, we’ll consider dropping the leather in favor of the art.”
Location, location…and yet another location
The original Ren Ellis Leather opened on Recreo, three blocks up from the Jardín, in the summer of 2004. The store was named for Rebecca’s then-husband, a leather designer who had sold his elaborately beaded, tooled and fringed custom jackets to celebrities in the U.S.—among them, Tina Turner, Burt Reynolds, Stevie Nicks, Ronald Reagan, Wayne Newton, and Steven Segal—and whose ready-to-wear label could be found at Nieman Marcus, Saks and Bloomingdales.
The store on Recreo carried leather and suede jackets, bottoms, boots, belts and handbags in styles from biker to a sleek high fashion line. There was a “doggy” line, too—biker jackets sized for Rebecca’s own menagerie, which at one time included five chihuahuas, a pug, an English bulldog, and two cats, plus two marmoset monkeys.
Business was brisk at first, thanks to well-heeled guests at the nearby Casa de Sierra Nevada hotel. But when sections of the hotel closed for renovation last year, sales dried up. It didn’t help that Ren Ellis was located two blocks beyond what Rebecca calls “the hub.”
“I’ve talked to tourists. They’ll start in the Jardín and walk up one block, then turn, go one more block, then back. They’ll work the spokes on the wheel in a one-block radius. To do well in retail here, you have to be in the hub,” Rebecca says.
Sergio Bustamante sculptures including "Las Tres Gracias" (foreground) punctuate the assortment of leather goods and local art available at John Adam Galeria de Arte & Piel at Canal #9. At right, works by Stephen Eaker (top left) and Bea Aaronson. In the background, Bustamate sculptures and a painting by Tomas Burkey.
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Jesus 25-A, Centro
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