“I’ll move into an office somewhere and continue to do interior design, lighting design, and custom-made invitations,” says Nicki Wilson, whose iT Boutique made a brave move to Main St. a couple of years ago from Briarwood. But after January 31, she will no longer have a retail store. Exactly where she’ll be moving her business was unsettled at press time. She says that while there’s plenty of office space around Ann Arbor, there’s very little available for small businesses. A Realtor recently “offered me one that was pretty reasonable, but said it had no bathroom. I said, ‘You mean, a shared bathroom?’ He said, ‘No, but if you walk …'” and she quit listening.
She’s closing iT–which sells a hodgepodge of home accessories, jewelry, and arts and crafts, some made by local artists, some manufactured goods, some on consignment, some not–for a couple of reasons. “My husband Frank is partly to blame; he wants to retire.” But more seriously, “Foot traffic dwindles when you get down here,” meaning the south side of the 300 block of S. Main. “Up by Shinola, that corner” things are buzzing, but fewer people make it all the way down to her historic red-brick house.
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Princess Designs in Kerrytown will close sometime in January: “the twenty-eighth at the latest, but at the rate we’re selling now, it might be earlier,” says owner Christy Jones.
A jeweler who likes to work in glass and chunky semiprecious stones, Jones was pointedly telling customers who bought gift certificates last summer that they should use them by the end of the year, and that should have been a tip-off. In October she announced her closing to her email customers.
Jones opened downstairs in Kerrytown in 1998 and moved to her upstairs corner spot in 2000. She’s closing the store because of aging parents, and she’ll be moving out of state to help them out. She’ll continue to make jewelry and sell online. The best way to keep up with her is her Etsy site, etsy.com/shop/jaspersjewels.
