Russian Pointe® Retailer: The Dance Store

At the Dance Store in Los Angeles, pointe shoes are the biggest part of their business. “At least half of our business is pointe shoes,” says owner Jenny Roman.

The store prides itself on having one of the largest selections of pointe shoes in the West Coast, and Roman says Russian Pointe®  is her second best-selling brand.

“We like Russian Pointe® because it’s a beautiful shoe and it fits really well,” Roman says. And with the various options for vamp lengths, shanks and more, “it tends to fit a lot of feet.”

A native of Johannesburg, South Africa, and an avid world traveler, Jenny earned a degree in Social Sciences at the University of Cape Town before meeting her husband, an American, and moving to the United States.

Roman and her husband opened the store together in 1997.

Roman says when she first opened the store, she would only do a handful of pointe shoe fittings a day. Today, Roman says she averages 10 to 20 pointe shoe fittings a day.

She says the increase is mainly due to the recession of 2008, which forced a large Capezio store in Hollywood to close, as well as dance stores in smaller towns, leaving many dancers without a place to buy their pointe shoes. Today, Roman says customers drive as much as three to four hours just to come to her store for its wide variety of pointe shoes and expert service.

“Once we had people from all the way from Arizona,” Roman remembers.

Unlike some dance stores that open in the vicinity of a large dance school, Roman says she purposely chose to locate her store on Robertson Boulevard, south of Beverly Hills because it was midway between several local schools.

“For me, it was more about freeway access and parking,” she says. “We didn’t want to be affiliated with any one studio.”