Credit deserved: One of Mission Street’s oldest businesses weighs its future

Jutting from metal trays atop a display case at Marian’s Apparel, the longtime clothing boutique near gritty 16th and Mission streets, are hundreds of yellow paper cards handwritten with customers’ names, addresses and account balances.

A holdover from the days before department store credit cards, the old school but increasingly challenging account management system may soon go by the wayside. Lately, store owner Joe Anker has been wondering whether the same thing ought to happen to Marian’s too.

Marian’s gave up one of its two storefronts around the beginning of the year because a family member of the landlord’s wants to open a Vietnamese restaurant there. When business was at its best around 2000, Marian’s carried more than double the number of accounts for its mostly Latino and middle-aged clientele. Customers would come in two or three times a month, pay on what they owed, and buy more, Anker said. While a number of those yellow cards are for longtime customers who’ve managed to hold on in the increasingly expensive neighborhood, many have moved to more affordable places: San Pablo, Richmond, Hayward, San Leandro.

“They lived around here and worked and got paychecks. [Then] the restaurant industry got hit,” said Anker, who pinpoints beginning of the downward slide in sales to 2008, after the economy tanked.

San Francisco rebounded, but the clothing business has changed, Anker said. Now, it’s hard to compete with the huge discounts offered by the big chains.

“I think that’s what’s changed, Costco, the outlet stores,” he said, “and I think people are being more careful with their money.”

Located at 2040 Mission St. beneath an upscaled SRO, the Radha Hotel, Marian’s is pleasantly retro in the rapidly changing Mission. An antique cash register sits on one of the counters near a cardboard display advertising church uniforms that can be ordered through the store, complete with white gloves. When it comes to shoppers, there are few unfamiliar faces.

“By the time someone walks in the store, I have their card out and ready for them,” said Andy Thompson, who co-owns Marian’s and is Anker’s brother-in-law. “Old style – we definitely know our customers.”

A family business like many of the stores that used to line Mission Street, Marian’s was opened as a woman’s apparel shop 64 years ago by Anker’s grandfather Morrey. Its namesake, Anker’s grandmother Marian, was a saleswoman there. Anker’s father, David, owned the store after Morrey did. Anker has been working there since 1983, Thompson since 1995. Over the years, the store added men’s clothing but since losing the additional store space is now almost entirely women’s.

Years ago, Marian’s had six or seven salespeople and knew all its neighbors. Once able to operate on handshake agreements with customers, the store has now tightened its credit requirements after getting burned too many times and is considering phasing out the yellow-card system. Thompson also has no qualms about performing his own collections.

“I bang on doors,” he said. “You don’t pay your bills, I bang on doors all over the Bay Area.”

Thompson appears to do his share of polite nudging as well. Just before closing the store on a recent Monday, a customer stopped by to pay on an account. Noting that for several months he’d paid nothing, Thompson urged him to pay $70. He left after paying $60.

That evening a woman swooned over a display of leopard-print handbags and asked Anker if they sold girdles. Marian’s does not.

Longtime customer and Mission resident Argentina Cruz also browsed the store and said she’d been shopping there for 15 years. She explained that she likes Marian’s because it’s not like Macy’s. The number of pieces are limited and the skirts aren’t too short.

“I’m more conservative,” Cruz said, adding that when her mother died, she knew she could find something for her at Marian’s.

“I bought a beautiful dress,” she said.

Anker said that Cruz’s mom had shopped at the store.

“A lot of generations. You’re going back to the ‘50s, so you’re talking about families,” he said.

As for the future of Marian’s, Thompson said, “We are trying to hang in there, but we are definitely having thoughts about what we want to do with the store.”

Anker jokes that he and Thompson are deciding “what we want to do when we grow up.”

Whatever Marian’s future, he said the journey’s been worth it.

“It’s been [64] years so it’s been a great run. It’s taken care of a lot of families.”

Want to see more photos of Marian’s then and now? Check out this slideshow. (Old photos courtesy of the store).