Kala Dralle loves shoes, but she'll never, ever open another shoe store. Remember Heel Shoes? Dralle does. She used to own it. Used to. Because it closed a few years back. She's OK with that. Dralle is much happier in her role as Program Development Specialist for the City of Tacoma's Community & Economic Development Department, where she gets to help enthusiastic entrepreneurs make a go of it. 

Dralle's tale is a familiar one in Tacoma, especially among independent business owners. The story always begins with a lone corporate warrior striking out on their own to do something they love.

But far too often the story ends badly.

Economic recession hasn't helped. These days, "Vacancy" and "For Lease" signs outnumber "Grand Opening" signs 10 to one. Our Bourgeois Bohemian dreams of a Whole Foods downtown have been replaced with more realistic speculation that we may be getting a WinCo Foods somewhere along 74th Ave. On a recent trip downtown, I noticed at least two new wine shops, though. And there are several new fine art galleries, one of which opened in a space occupied by another gallery that closed because it wasn't selling enough art. It opened next to a wine bar, which now occupies space that has been home to six or seven businesses during the past several years. The last one was a coffee shop, I think. Coffee shops emerge and die like fruit flies around here. ...

So, Tacoma's economy seems to be lurching back to life. Sort of. Economic indicators suggest some sort of recovery has begun. Unemployment rates are still horrifying. Consumers aren't as confident as we need them to be. But entrepreneurial confidence seems to be budding. That's good. Confidence is important. But so are the economic realities. That's what this story is about - the cold, hard, unforgiving economic realities that determine whether or not a business survives or tanks. Economic realities change block to block, but there's plenty of general guidance, as well as resources and advice for business owners in Tacoma who want to survive. Please, please, please, Tacoma - don't let us discourage you. Don't lose that entrepreneurial spirit. We love you. We want you to succeed. Recognizing the realities is in your own best interest.

If the shoe fits ...

"When I opened my shop, it was based on my desire to do what I wanted to do. It was my own exuberance," says Dralle, recalling the launch of Heel, which happened in 2000, right before the last recession. "I just decided that I knew enough people that I thought would buy shoes from me."

Before long, Dralle realized she was struggling against some evil, invisible force. Business wasn't booming. At first she blamed bad inventory. She wasn't stocking the right shoes, she surmised. So she bought more. And more. And more. Before long she had more shoes than she knew what to do with. She was buried in inventory. And she couldn't pay her rent with shoes. Eventually, she buckled. She applied for a job selling shoes at Nordstrom.

"When I applied, they told me what I needed to be selling every day," she recalls. "I finally did the math (regarding her own business). I realized I needed to be selling 10 times what I was selling to make it."

There it is. Entrepreneurial enthusiasm, meet economic reality. Tacoma, it seems, has an abundance of one, and a blind spot regarding the other. Since her experience as a small business owner in Tacoma, Dralle has learned a lot more about economic realities. She considers it a blessing to be able to help small business owners in Tacoma avoid some of the hard lessons she learned.

"This is a town that can work well with a small business that is strong and works well with their customer base," says Dralle. "You shouldn't just assume that if you build it, they will come. A lot of businesses start small and work very carefully, very hard. It's not just about having really good taste."

Nope. It's about numbers, people, their preferences and buying habits and making sure your business matches up with those local realities.

Just ask Judi Hyman, operations manager at Twokoi Japanese Cuisine and one of three Downtown Merchant Group vice presidents. Hyman just ran some numbers at Twokoi, and realized July was the best month, financially speaking, the restaurant has ever had. Twokoi isn't a discount restaurant by any stretch of the imagination. It's what many downtown Tacoma denizens might consider "high end." Its phenomenal success, meanwhile, provides anecdotal evidence that some of the ritzier businesses opening in Tacoma have a chance. But what does Twokoi do differently?

"I always ask people if they've done their research," says Hyman. "A lot of people have hobbies that they want to turn into businesses. And wishes and dreams are beautiful. But then you get it on paper and it can sing a different tune."

Hyman says she runs a series of financial reports every single day, compares them, graphs them, color codes them and uses them to infer the changing needs of Twokoi's customer base. So that's a good start. Don't run a business based on uninformed assumptions and feedback from your friends - try looking at the numbers and gathering some objective feedback. In business school, they call it market research. Businesses looking for tutelage in the mystical art of market research have plenty of free resources at their disposal, says Dralle. The city's Economic Gardening program offers all sorts of data that business owners can use to get to know their neighborhood, their customers, their buying habits and their buying power.

Information like that is the perfect complement to Tacoma's eager entrepreneurial drive.

"We consult with a lot of people through our Economic Gardening programs," says Dralle. "There are always new businesses opening in Tacoma, and we want them to be smart and successful. There is a wonderful entrepreneurial spirit here. But business owners need tools and information and the chops to back it up."

Taking a look at the economic landscape can be hard around here. The truth is, we're more of a WinCo town than a Whole Foods town. Sorry, but that's the economic reality. Tacoma's median income (which was about $47,000 in 2008) is on the rise. But it doesn't come close to supporting the kind of freewheeling Fremont kind of transformation we blog about. As one observer put it: Our attitude may be Nordstrom, but our buying behavior is Target.

"We expect our customers to want everything to be just as good as Seattle has," says Dralle. "We're trying to fill that void. Given all of that, it's only the businesses that have the right mix that are going to make it. It's Darwinian."

If that sounds scary and depressing, it shouldn't be. The truth is, Tacoma, that businesses can be successful just about anywhere as long as they balance all that enthusiasm with a little planning and realism.

"I don't mean to discourage people from going into business," says Dralle. "I just want to see strong businesses. I want to see people making a living for themselves."