Schaffer’s Bridal & Formal Shop, which for more than a half-century has dressed thousands of Central Iowa women and girls for the biggest celebrations of their lives, on Wednesday will enter the riskiest period of its own life.

That’s the day that Kari Smith, a 34-year-old who has owned the business at the corner of Eighth and Walnut streets for 10 years, will kick off the largest sale in Schaffer’s history. Packed within the 13,000-square-foot shop are 3,000 wedding gowns and prom and bridal dresses that would ordinarily fetch anywhere between $300 and $1,000 each. From Wednesday until the end of March, more than $1 million worth of dresses will be priced at least 30 percent off. Smith wants to sell them all.

The sale follows Wells Fargo & Co.’s September purchase of the Davidson Building, in which Schaffer’s is housed. Wells Fargo Financial, a subsidiary of the banking giant, is located across the street from Schaffer’s, and it intends to build a near-replica of its 350,000-square-foot building on the space. Last week, the San Francisco-based company’s board voted to demolish the building in April and start construction. Schaffer’s and the building’s other businesses, which include Made in Mexico and Flying Hippo, must be gone by March 31.

So Smith has spent the last several months searching for a new location for her business. The process has opened her eyes to the opportunities such a move can create, including the chance to customize her space and add amenities she hadn’t previously realized was possible.

It has also exemplified the challenges owners of small businesses face in trying to maintain operations in downtown Des Moines, a place where government bureaucracy can be frustrating to navigate, large companies dominate the landscape, and a small business owner’s voice sometimes isn’t powerful enough to be heard.

“Small businesses are like fresh fruit; if you leave them on the table for too long, they get rotten,” Smith said, referring to the uncertainty she has experienced during the change of her building’s ownership and the difficulty she has had getting information from the city and Wells Fargo. “Big businesses are like toothpaste. You can put them on the shelf for years and they’re still all right. I thought it would be an easier transition. I’ve learned a lot in this process.”

The process began for Smith in mid-July, when she received a call from Chris Greenfield, head of the Downtown Community Alliance. Greenfield told her that Wells Fargo was considering purchasing the Davidson building, she said.

In September, she learned Wells Fargo had purchased the building, though she wasn’t sure what that meant for her business. By the end of October, she finally nailed down an agreement with executives at Wells Fargo under which she would vacate the building by the end of March.   Meanwhile, as Smith labored to get questions about her future answered, other aspects of her business passed by.

Because she didn’t know where the business would be relocated, Smith couldn’t buy advertisements in the yellow pages that would reflect any changes. As a result, when the 2003-2004 telephone directories, which will be in use until late fall, will still list her Davidson Building location. She also wasn’t able to attend the annual bridal buying shows in New York City at the end of the summer because she didn’t know how much inventory to take on.

“Was I buying for 13,000 square feet, or 8,000 square feet?” she said. She has since made two “make-up” trips to Manhattan to place orders for the coming year, though she purchased a fraction of what she normally buys.  One of the aspects of owning a small business in downtown Des Moines that Smith will not miss is the lack of parking, she said, and the difficulties of being subjected to the actions of the much larger businesses that surround her.

For example, half of the on-street parking near Schaffer’s was closed for more than a year while construction crews worked to build Wells Fargo Financial’s 350,000-square-foot office building across the street, Smith said.

While Smith sent fliers and e-mail updates to her customers suggesting alternative places to park, large trucks would occasionally block the major intersections near the store. The construction alone cost her more than $100,000 in lost business, she estimated, though some of that loss could be attributed to the opening of a rival bridal store in the western suburbs, she said.

As a result, gathering information from the city and Wells Fargo and attempting to relay it to her customers have become major tasks for Smith, consuming a large portion of her time since the summer. Her efforts are complicated by the fact that 75 percent of her clients don’t live in Central Iowa, and aren’t familiar with downtown Des Moines.

At the same time, parking tickets have become more expensive and city officials have begun issuing more of them in recent months as the city has worked to close a budget shortfall. The city had granted an exemption for Schaffer’s several years ago that lets customers park along the street during rush hour. It was rescinded in October, Smith said.

Dozens of her customers have received parking tickets in recent months. Smith herself was issued $260 worth in the last month. Her car was towed twice before she befriended employees from a local towing company and explained her situation to its drivers. Now, those drivers come into Schaffer’s to warn her that her car needs to be moved. [Business Record photographer Duane Tinkey received a parking ticket within 10 minutes parking in a loading zone outside the shop.]

Because of these headaches, Smith is reluctant to move to a location where she is unable to “control the situation,” which includes everything from putting up signs advertising her presence to being able to offer convenient parking to customers.

As of Jan. 29, Smith was grappling with a decision over whether she should temporarily relocate her shop to Des Moines’ East Village or Beaverdale. Neither location was larger than 3,000 square feet, one-sixth the size of her current store, though each offered advantages. From there, she will make plans for a permanent store.

She likes the East Village because she believes in supporting downtown Des Moines, she said. She has lived in or near downtown Des Moines for years, first in Sherman Hill and now at The Plaza condominiums.

Beaverdale appeals to her because of its retail environment and the promise of being near so many other small businesses, she said.

She expected to make a decision on Friday or over the weekend, after the Business Record went to print. In the end, she said, she would choose a location that is “best for her customers.”

That may not be Des Moines at all. Several suburban developers and owners of retail spaces are wooing her, and she mentioned in a conversation that there are several appealing locations throughout the metropolitan area, including Jordan Creek Town Center and West Glen.

“I am eliminating my own passion in the decision,” she said. “I am just going to listen to my customers.”

Editor’s note: On Friday, after the Business Record went to press, Schaffer’s Bridal & Formal Shop owner Kari Smith agreed to move the business to a 4,000-square-foot space above Noodle Zoo at 601 E. Locust Street in Des Moines’ East Village.