Shopping-center kiosks are a way to try retail ownership

Silvia Spross took a baby step into small-business ownership when she opened a jewelry kiosk on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade.

It took just $11,000 to set up Lapzos Beads, including $3,500 for the first month’s rent. So far the Swiss immigrant has hit her goal to average at least $200 a day in sales of the necklaces, rings and bracelets she makes from rough-cut semiprecious stones, polished rocks and beads from around the world.

“I would love to own a little store but figured this would be a great start, just to see if it works,” said Spross, whose lease runs just through January. She started the business this month after quitting her job as a bead-store manager when her hours were reduced.

The Santa Monica resident is part of a growing band of mostly micro entrepreneurs who set up shop for as little as a month or two in the carts and kiosks that line the corridors of shopping centers around the country.

They sell jewelry, cellphones, hats — even teeth-whitening services. Crocs, the ubiquitous plastic shoes, started as kiosk items.

It’s a $12-billion industry in the U.S., said Patricia Norins, publisher of Specialty Retail Report, a quarterly magazine based in Hanover, Mass., that covers news about kiosks and temporary stores.

It can be a lucrative business, especially around the holidays. Jennifer Telfer, vice president of operations at CJ Products in Oceanside, Calif., said a single kiosk operated by her company to sell stuffed animal pillows she invented rang up sales of as much as $125,000 during the holiday season last year.

Some kiosks open just for the holidays. The hours are long, and not all operations are profitable.

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