Retail Profile

Retail Profile: In The Kitchen

Location: Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner: KC Lapiana Founded: 2002 Own or rent: Own After years in the retail business KC Lapiana has moved out of her home base of Pittsburgh and put her store In The Kitchen into the hands of a trusted group of managers. The reason? Her husband retired from a long broadcasting career and the pair decided to move south. “We made the…

Retail Profile: Perennial Accents

Location: St. Joseph, Mich. Founded: 1995 Owner: Kellye Wilson (since October 2018) Square footage: 5,000 sq. ft. Rent or Own: Rent Perennial Accents, which was launched in a barn in 1995 as a family-owned business growing perennial plants, making dried wreaths and selling cookware, got a turnaround when former Whirlpool executive Kellye Wilson bought the…

Retail Profile: Sparrow Hawk Cookware

Location: Colorado Springs, Colo. Owner: Sam Eppley Founded: 1979 Square footage: 4,000 sq. ft. Own or rent: Own Sam Eppley knows what makes his store special: customer service. “We have a ton of employees who have been with us at least five years and one lady has been here for 20 years,” he says. Eppley himself has been around for 41 years, “so there is a lot of…

Retail Profile: Forté Coffee

Location: St. Joseph, Mich. Founded: 2018 Co-owners: Brian and Barbara Maynard Square footage: 1,850 sq ft Brian Maynard’s love affair with coffee goes back to his childhood. That coffee passion began with the influence of his father Del, who, Maynard says, “always had a cup of coffee in his hand and would wake up in the middle of the night to…

Retail Profile: The Common Housefly

Location: Black Mountain, N.C. Owners: Michael and Marcia Liss Founded: 2005 Square footage: 1,500 sq. ft. Rent or Own: Own Michael Liss likes to joke that his store, The Common Housefly, has 3,000 square feet of product “crammed” into 1,500-square feet of space. That sort of abundance lends well to the store’s tagline “A Toy Store for Foodies.” Or as Liss describes it a…

Retail Profile: Artichoke

Location: Cincinnati, Ohio Owners: Karen and Brad Hughes Founded: 2016 Square Footage: 883 sq. ft. Own or Rent: Own If you can’t shop at Artichoke in person, you can visit via a virtual reality version of the Cincinnati store. Available on the Artichoke website, the virtual store allows customers to get acquainted before they come in, something owners Brad and Karen…

Retail Profile: The Pot Rack

Location: Leavenworth, Kan. Founded: 2008 Owners: Ollie and Kathryn West Square Footage: 3,500 sq. ft. Own or Rent: Own After careers in the military and then second careers in the corporate world, Ollie and Kathryn West “retired” into a third career in retail. The pair opened The Pot Rack on the main drag of Leavenworth, Kan., a historic town they both call home, in…

Retail Profile: Grand Fête

Retail Profile: Grand Fête Location: Hudson, Wis. Founded: May 2017 Co-owners: Kay Timm, Jane Wegand and Lynn Ulrich Square Footage: 1,800 sq. ft. Rent or Own: Rent The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes a grande fête as a way “to honor something with a large party or public celebration” and that’s the mood the trio of owners of the Grand Fête in Hudson seek to set…

Retail Profile: Somethin’s Cookin’

Location: Panama City, Fla. Owner: Hannalore Holland Founded: 1972 --This is the store’s third location. Square footage: 3,000 sq. ft. Rent or Own: Own When Hurricane Michael tore up Panama City, Fla., packing winds of 155 miles per hour this past October, Hannalore Holland dug into her supply of perishables and fed the first responders. Holland, whose store…