Surviving in Amazon's shadow (pictures)

Matthea Andre took over the Woolly Mammoth, a shoe store opened by her father in 1970, when the rise of online shopping had shuttered many retail outlets on The Ave in Seattle. "We have a lot of loyalty," she says of her customers. An influx of people from a booming tech economy is good for business, she says.

Darla Green says she keeps her skin care salon open with a combination of services and retail. “I don’t want to see Seattle become San Francisco," says Green, who is running for city council in the suburb of Burien.

Glenda Curdy says Amazon can't replicate the experience of buying a custom bridal veil in her Burien store.

"You can't compete," says Allison Leila Lee-Moore of Amazon. Instead of looking for the best deal, her customers at Burien Books look for the experience of picking a book off the shelves to buy.

"People say 'I don’t need you anymore, I have a Kindle,'" says Jamie Lutton, who co-owns Twice Sold Tales in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood and says she has memorized the plots to more than 500 books. But she also says she loves what Amazon offers as a catalog of books for her customers.

"There’s a perception that you can get everything [on Amazon], but that’s not true," says Christy McDanold, owner of Secret Garden Books in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood.

"We see ourselves as doing something different," says Maggie Burns, owner of Re-Soul, a shoe store in Ballard. She brings in shoes from Italy under the Re-Soul brand that can't be bought on major shoe retail websites.

"People want to walk around and pop into places," says Diane McCrae, owner of art boutique Venue in Ballard. Her shop includes artists' studios and Seattle-focused wares.