city pages
july 26, 2006

the salesman of vegan shoes, belts, hats, purses

by eliot brown

Jon Novick lives a few miles from the nearest Famous Dave's Barbeque, and it's probably best that it stays that way. He owns an all-vegan boutique, where he sell shoes, clothing, purses and snacks that are 100 percent free of animal skin, animal product and animal smell (probably).

If it's not made from animal, you're not interested? Well, then the shop's not for you. Named Fast and Furless, the shop certainly serves a niche market, a fact of which Novick is well aware…it's hard to imagine stores like this popping up on every street corner.

But for those who are part of that vegan niche, the store is one of a kind, at least in the area. If the St. Paul shop doesn't have everything they could want, it definitely has none of what they don't want: The products are all sweatshop-free, leather-free, fur-free, wool-free and snakeskin-free (though the prices remind you that none of these amenities are even close to free).

Novick carries shoes made from recycled tires, garments made from hemp and handbags made from recycled billboards. And at least from what he told me, he's been doing decent since he opened the store in November.

An energetic man who looks to be in his 30s, Novick seems to have a pretty sustainable setup for the immediate future. He transformed part of his house, which he rents from his father, into a store without all that much obvious investment. There are racks for the shoes and clothes, a cash register, a display case, a sign out front and inventory, though beyond that, it still looks like a house (he lives in the back). On top of that, there's a decent community of vegans living in the Cities, and his products are difficult to find in area stores.

"I knew there was a pretty vibrant veg community here," he said, citing a high ranking for the Twin Cities by the animal-rights group PETA.

He spends his days manning the store, entertaining the customers that trickle in (when I arrived to meet Jon, there were two shoppers inside). He showed me the unique qualities of his various products including a boot made from recycled tires and a "sweet spot for kicking corporate ass," he told me, showing his full set of gold braces as he smiled.

Located on Snelling, near St Clair Ave in St Paul, he gets a few college students (the shop is just a couple blocks from Macalester College's "Veggie Co-op" dorm), though much of the traffic comes from others throughout the Cities.

What drew him to make such a specialized store?

He's a vegan, for one. Beyond that, he worked in Los Angeles at a Whole Foods store for a while and eventually thought of opening a vegan café. But as he recounted, "I sort of came to the conclusion that I was a much better vegan eater than a vegan cook."

With that life lesson learned, he took note of the occasional vegan boutique on the West Coast and eventually decided to bring the concept back to his homeland.

As for the future, Novick said eventually he'd like to get a website up and running for mail order, as well as bring in more food than the current snack selection he has. "Even with all the co-ops out here, some of this stuff is hard to find," he said.