Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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ORIGIN STORY RODES H ONE QUESTION Carmichael's Bookstore 1295 Bardstown Road 2720 Frankfort Ave. Founded in April 1978. The original store was at 1582 Bardstown Road; Carmichael's has been at its current Bardstown Road location since 1983. Caufeld & Shook photo oward Vogt, current president of luxury clothing retailer Rodes, says the secret to longevity is adaptability. Te store, now located at 4938 Brownsboro Road, turns 100 this year. Vogt's wife Susan, a women's clothing buyer for the store, is a descendant of one of the founders, John Starks Rodes. A lot has changed since 1914. Back then, Rodes' original location, the 14-story Starks Building, was the tallest structure in Louisville. Te store opened as Te Starks Company, a haberdashery. According to Susan Vogt, John Starks Rodes and partner William Rapier added men's clothing a few years later. Vogt says the company came back from the sales slump of the Great Depression by manufacturing military uniforms during World War II. By the 1980s, the company had the original downtown location, plus a store in Mall St. Matthews and stores in Lexington, Nashville and Columbus, Ind. It added women's clothes in 1977. In the 1990s, Rodes rebranded and began carrying high-end labels like Ferragamo and Versace. "We had to pick a place to play, so we decided to play in the high end, basically the branded premier luxury lines because Louisville didn't have those," says Howard Vogt. In 2003, Rodes closed the downtown location and moved to the East End. Its biggest challenge today is competition from online shopping. To keep up, the store started ofering services like personal shopping. "Here's a typical discussion: 'We're going to go to Jack Fry's for dinner and then out to this.' Or, 'We're going to Derby and we're sitting here. Dress me,'" says the company president. (Stylists at the store picked out a Derby outft for billionaire Richard Branson one year.) Rodes also ofers a service called "closet cleans." Stylists go through a clients' current wardrobe, advising what to get rid of and what to buy. "Guys tend to keep the same things," Howard Vogt says. "Someone tells them they look good when they're 27 and that's all they buy." His advice to other businesses that want to be around for a century: "You have to keep reinventing yourself. If you think you can be the same person, the same company, you're not going to make it." A RODES MORE TRAVELED Rodes' Starks Building store circa 1920 and the Brownsboro Road store today. Against the odds of the technological advances of the industry, what is it about the power of the physical book that keeps Carmichael's alive? "We at the bookstore have a connection to books. I personally grew up in the store; books are a part of my life and who I am. I love seeing a shelf flled with them. I want to see the physical book and give it to someone else. And I don't think I'm alone in this. A book is something that has to be experienced in its entirety, something that becomes part of who you are. Once you buy a book, nobody can take that away from you, and that can't be said of e-reading because that isn't owned by you — it is just borrowed." — Kelly Estep, manager of the Bardstown Road location 2.14 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 41