By Dylan Marsh
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
CLAREMONT — In late December, Tangled Bella Boutique announced that they would no longer continue operating their brick and mortar storefront in Opera House Square.
In an effort to continue operating their women-run small business, and provide boutique feminine fashion, Tangled Bella has created an app from which they will provide all the same goods that were sold at their location.
“We are now a completely online store and just launched our own app, which is very exciting. Through the app we are going to be going live twice a week to showcase our stuff and people can buy things from the website. Live sales are usually a pretty big hit because people can go shopping from their couch. We try on all the clothes so we can show how they look on a body that may be similar to yours,” Tangled Bella Boutique owners Jessica Kinson and Kelsea Gorey said of the new format of their small business.
According to Kinson and Gorey, their decision to close the physical location stems entirely from steeply rising rental costs for storefronts in the area. Rentals for storefronts in the historic downtown areas of Claremont including Pleasant Street and Opera House Square have reached prices of roughly a few thousand dollars a month post-Claremont’s Pleasant Street revitalization project. Kinson and Gorey say that it is because of these high rental costs they were able to maintain a store front but that it ultimately wasn’t profitable.
“So many people want to start small businesses in that area but can’t afford to be down there. We also know a couple of other business owners that are struggling on Pleasant Street because of really high rentals. We think a little woman owned boutique should be able to open up and operate in the downtown area,” Kinson and Gorey said of the difficult time shop owners downtown have run into.
While Tangled Bella doesn’t intend to stay online forever, the shop owners look forward to taking an e-commerce approach to retail, which will provide the business with significantly lower overhead. Statistical reports show that in the United States, online shopping continues to grow significantly, and while it is down since lockdowns were lifted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is still higher than a pre-COVID period.
Eventually, the shop owners hope to purchase a building for themselves, potentially large enough to feature other businesses within the same building. The intention being so that they would be able to provide brick and mortar storefronts to small businesses at reasonable prices.
“We are not only business partners but also really good friends. So we are able to talk about how we are feeling and let each other know if we are struggling. We don’t want to burn ourselves out and hate what we do. The main reason we went into business is to help our families and we love to work, so we are excited to continue and keep planning for the future,” the small business owners stated about their intentions for continued growth.
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