Roller Rabbit Skates Past Nantucket Chain Store Ban

Roller Rabbit can’t run in Nantucket. But the Roller Rabbit General Store is a different story.

In an example of the quirkiness of local laws — and how far one will go to bypass them — Roller Rabbit signed a two-year lease at 44 Centre Street in Nantucket’s downtown, one year after controversy nearly did the company’s local operations in, the Nantucket Current reported. The storefront recently opened for the season.

Nantucket put a formula business bylaw on the books two decades ago, colloquially known as a ban on chain stores. In the downtown district, businesses with 10 or more locations are not allowed to set up shop.

The law had never been enforced until last summer, when a complaint led to the Roller Rabbit store on Centre Street being shut down during the peak season. The pajama boutique and lifestyle brand could no longer sell its wares.

Its downtown return this summer is no less controversial, but passes the smell test for local officials.

That’s because the company tweaked its name and design, differentiating it from the dozen of other Roller Rabbit stores across the country. Additionally, at least half of the goods sold at the store are not Roller Rabbit branded products.

“We believe the above complies clearly with the stipulations as written in the ‘formula business’ bylaws,” Roller Rabbit’s vice president of visual merchandising and store design Hānnah Kinser-Sampedro wrote to the building commissioner over the winter.

The bylaw came about in 2006, one year after Ralph Lauren set up shop on Main Street. The store was not forced to close because it was already in place when the law passed; other preexisting companies are grandfathered under the rules and grocery stores are exempted.

For local residents and businesses, the concerns to arise out of the Roller Rabbit survival in downtown are plentiful. Chains now have a path to potentially bypass the bylaws on the books. There’s already worry about businesses that lease a store in Nantucket before they hit the maximum franchise store count, then continue to grow after the fact.

— Holden Walter-Warner