Big boxes broadsided

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The large billboards dotting parts of Louisville are as striking for their color scheme -- black and white -- as they are for their message.

"Keep Louisville Weird" the billboards scream.

It's part of a public-relations campaign in Louisville and cities from Boulder, Colo., to Raleigh, N.C., aimed at drawing customers to unique, locally owned stores.

The campaigns and small-business alliances are using the effort to stay in competition with large retail chains such as Wal-Mart, Target and the recently merged Kmart-Sears.

"They can be a serious threat," said Leslie Stewart, a public relations specialist responsible for the billboards. "Their collective buying power is so great that many local merchants can't compete on a pricing level on merchandise and the independents can't compete when it comes to the big marketing dollars the chains have."

But large retailers say they bring things to customers that small stores don't and that the presence of one doesn't mean the demise of the other.

"We think the two can coexist quite peacefully," said Ellen Tolley, a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation in Washington.

Some small-business owners, such Cheryl Daly, who runs the "Raleigh Unchained" campaign in North Carolina, think otherwise.

"Chain stores are definitely a threat to small business," Miss Daly said. "Look at a small coffee shop trying to compete with Starbucks."

The small-business alliances and "Weird" campaigns grew out of meetings by a group of independent booksellers, said David Bolduc, owner of the Boulder Book Store in Boulder, Colo., and one of the founders of the movement.