Retail : Featured Stories

You might know Hilary Phelps as the sister who cheered on her decorated brother at the London Olympics. But she is also the creator of an interactive website, Genuine Joy, which explores food, fashion, fitness and culture. Phelps talks about the inspiration for the site and her plans to expand it. 

Suburban life isn't all parking spots and Target stores. Good sandwich shops, ice cream parlors and an, ahem, independent cafe are some of the things suburbanites seek.

Fluid Movement, a Baltimore theater group known for performing water ballets, has told the story of Baltimore's retail history. This time, the actors are on skates. Bmore Media Managing Photographer Steve Ruark captured the quirky tale with his lens. Step back in time with this photo essay.  

When it opened more than 30 years ago, Harborplace was hailed as a watershed urban redevelopment project. Over time, the downtown city mall had started showing its age. Now it's turning another corner with new tenants opening this summer and plans to breathe more life onto Light Street. 

Jennifer Buerger is a mother of two, a psychotherapist and an entrepreneur who sells smoothies blended with Icelandic-style skyr. Don't know what is skyr? You will soon as Wegmans Food Markets just agreed to sell the product in its mid-Atlantic stores. 

After struggling to find a job during the recession, Marta Ines Quintana was forced to switch gears. She parlayed her culinary and marketing skills to form a food business that draws on her family's Cuban heritage. She started a prepared food business and opened a Towson cafe. Next on her agenda: a TV cooking show. 

Sushi, wine-making and a contemporary bed and breakfast -- in Little Italy? They are among the new businesses calling the neighborhood home as more young people move to the area and more dollars flow into nearby Harbor East.

A handful of women entrepreneurs have opened trendy fashion boutiques in Baltimore within the past year. By keeping prices and expenses low, using social media to promote the stores and staying ahead of the fashion curve, they hope to hang on by more than a thread as they ride out the bumpy economy.