The Story

Our goal is to become a Lexington Landmark. To do that effectively we wanted to be in the center of town. Our survival strategy in business has always been to look beyond Lexington for customers. We targeted potential customers in surrounding counties and Eastern Kentucky through Public Radio in the early years. In 1995 and 1996 when we published our mail order Catazines we would regularly buy the J Peterman mailing list of his customers in West Virginia, Indiana and Ohio. This effort has paid off with a bulging mailing list of out of town customers. Now, with the internet accounting for more than half of our business the Lexington Store will eventually showcase what people all around the country are experiencing and buying. We've always felt slightly handicapped on Southland Dr in creating that "wow" experience for first time customers. We've done great with our little brick ranch house on a strip shopping street but the urban environment is really where we belong -- hard wood floors, exposed brick and high ceiling.

The sidewalk on Esplanade is wide making a sidewalk café a real possibility. Downtown Lexington has very limited possibilities for street cafes because of the noise created on the main streets and the narrowness of the sidewalks everywhere. We had the vision of bright colored umbrellas lining the sidewalk from the very beginning.

In 1997 we met with Mayor Pam Miller and expressed our desired to locate downtown. She encouraged us to meet with The Sadr family who owned most of the block around Main and Esplanade. The Sadrs owned and operated the Persian Rug Gallery on Main. We've been working with Farzin who recently inherited the property since then. His vision for his property was entrepreneurial and against the grain of most previous downtown development. He wanted people. He wanted retail and he wanted Café. It was a difficult match because we had to wait so long for him to create the development plan and get it financed. The 1.5 Million dollar project was finally closed in January of this year.

Parking Parking Parking. That's the most often asked question by everyone. Yes, we think parking is a problem during business hours, but after 5:00 P.M. and on Saturdays and Sundays parking is really not a problem. The city did eliminate the parallel parking on Esplanade last year making it a direct pull in which increased the spaces in front of our shop from 8 to 23. It's a lot better than New York. What can I say...