Suburban Silk to open retail store in Colorado

By Cinde W. Ingram -- Home Accents Today, 5/1/2006

After fielding multiple questions from retailers in their exhibition booth, the partners operating Suburban Silk decided to open a small retail store in Boulder, Colo., and to share their first-hand knowledge with retail customers.

Grand Opening of Suburban Hill is scheduled for Aug. 18, the Friday following the close of the New York Gift Show, where partners Edward Vanegas and Paul Chansingthong plan to continue shopping for products that complement their contemporary home accents, boutique gifts and stationery. Their store will feature Suburban Silk's products including cosmetic totes, compact mirrors, travel totes, spa eye pillows and buckwheat travel pillows. It also will carry silk photo frames, journals, photo albums, soy candles and greeting cards.

Linen aprons and lively greeting cards were among items ordered when their retail buying started in May at the Las Vegas Gourmet Housewares Show. Their buying will continue through the summer markets for their 1,200-sq.-ft. store, located in The Hill area across the street from the University of Colorado campus in Boulder.

At later markets, Vanegas plans to share picture books and first-hand accounts of their "retail laboratory" with customers inside Suburban Silk's booth at exhibitions at AmericasMart in Atlanta, George Little Management shows in New York, San Francisco and Merchandise Mart Properties shows in Los Angeles and Chicago.

The partners actually considered naming the store "Retail Laboratory," but thought it would confuse college students, who will be its targeted consumers along with high-end residential consumers in nearby Victorian homes, Vanegas said. "And then all of the dorms. We're going to tap into the fraternity market with a lot of gifts and stationary items. When you offer sorority monogramming on silk handbags, jewelry rolls and boutique stuff, it becomes really a big deal."

When asked why the Las Vegas-based vendor chose Boulder, Vanegas spoke of enjoying time spent there at a second home. "The quality of life is great and so are the views from every direction," he said. "They've got all four seasons while in Vegas we have one."

The vendor plans more changes for next year. It has leased corporate office and warehouse space in Boulder.

"We're going to be sharing a showroom at the new World Market building 2, starting January '07 when it opens, and moving our corporate office and warehouse to Boulder," Vanegas said. "We'll be moving everything away from here and just have the showroom to come back to."