Eclectic CO. was really born out of the need for a place for artists/makers and customers to come together in a beautiful and harmonious shopping experience that keeps community at the forefront. My background is in business operations, I worked for Starbucks for 9 years and loved supporting a large team and developing leaders. While I loved a lot of that work, I really wanted to be closer to our local community and work in social impact. I began seriously doing research and positioning myself closer to the social impact world, with the [then] Colorado Institute for Social Impact.

Concurrently, I went to a maker’s market called Womxn of the Future with a friend, hoping to buy some unique gifts. While there, I met some amazing female makers and just felt so inspired and like this was the path forward. I spoke to some of these makers and asked them things like “Where can I find you outside of this market?” This was 2018 and Instagram sales weren’t as big then. Most of the women said that they were on Etsy or at markets and I just thought “this doesn’t work for consumers”. I started doing research and talking to makers about what their needs were. The answers were pretty unanimous: they needed more places to sell that gave them margins that made sense. Upon further research, I discovered that most cooperative models would take a high percentage of sales, usually 30-50% which made margins too small to be profitable for handmade and vintage goods. Because labor is such an expense to small business, I thought that makers could potentially give TIME in the space, as opposed to as much MONEY. After lots of conversations and surveys, I came up with a formula that would support the store being open 7 days a week, and also provide a healthy margin of profits for makers to keep their businesses sustainable. That was really the crux of what made Eclectic CO. different.

The beautiful, and admittedly largely unintended, consequence of this model is the community bonds it created were really beyond anything that I could have anticipated. Artists and makers getting to work with one another creates a tight web of collaboration, camaraderie and support for one another that really filled a void for our makers. Additionally, we have seen our makers really benefit from being in the store and meeting customers: it gives customers such joy to meet the incredible humans behind their purchases and creates opportunities for repeat customers and custom works. While the model was definitely very intentional and well thought-out, the benefits of being set up this way just continue to amaze me.

The Eclectic CO. brand is a family of stores housing over 200 artists, makers and curators from the Front Range of Colorado. It started with Eclectic CO. on Tejon St. in downtown Colorado Springs in 2018. Through that endeavor we met an incredible group of vendors that saw incredible results from the model. One of the original vendors for Eclectic CO., Ani Barrington of Two Wolves Vintage, immediately saw my vision and was an incredible support to me from the beginning. About 2 years into the project, we began talks about opening a second shop so that we could support more makers. We found the perfect space in Old Colorado City to launch a second store, and in November of 2020 (on the second anniversary of the first store), Eclectic OCC was born. The two stores have allowed us to support nearly 150 makers at a time and provide incredible economic and social opportunities for all of these amazing makers. Our most recent venture, I am so excited to say, is Circa Vintage by Eclectic CO.. Ideal location, on the same block as Eclectic OCC, it is a new twist on the same concept: supporting local makers, great shopping experience. The only difference is, we specialize in vintage clothing, records, and homewares. This project came to fruition with Eclectic CO. vendor Erica Dunford, owner of WayWay Co. vintage goods. This new project is so fun and brings sustainability and social impact for the fashion industry to the forefront.

The COVID pandemic really tested our resilience and creativity as small business owners. While we were shut down, there was seemingly no way for our vendors to reach customers and make sales. The way the model works, our vendors pay rent for their spaces in the stores, which would have been very difficult while shut down, also with many out of work in their 9 to 5’s. I quickly pivoted and began spending all of my time applying for grants and support for small businesses and was able to forgive rent for all of our vendors for several months. Instead of being open for in-person shopping, Ani and I began hosting “QVC- style” shopping events where we would go live on Instagram and Facebook and show customers the things we had in the store, trying things on, answering questions, etc. We offered every option we could think of: home deliveries, drive-by pickup in downtown, we would really do anything for a sale. It showed our vendors how committed we were to their success and I really believe the community that we had and the way we leaned on each other really supported not only the health of our businesses, but also our mental health during that time.