Brickwood Boutique — Cape Girardeau native Edmonds started small and grew

Christen Edmonds, owner and proprietor of women's clothing store Brickwood Boutique, has a new location in Cape Girardeau at 430 Broadway — known as Scout Hall.

The business is by no means new, however.

Edmonds, a 2009 Cape Girardeau Central High School graduate, started Brickwood in April 2016 in the Indie House, a couple of blocks away at 605 Broadway.

The entrepreneur, a University of Mississippi alumna who also spent two years at University of Missouri-Columbia, is the daughter of Chris Edmonds, founder/president of Element 74, now part of Red Letter Communications.

Edmonds's dad and other family members gave her some direct counsel, which she chose to follow.

"The advice was to start as small as I could, which is why I started out in the smallest rent space in the Indie House basement with about 500-square-feet," she said.

"It was kind of a pop-up business there except I did have regular hours. The store grew and I ended up moving upstairs at Indie House and taking two rooms, essentially 800-square-feet. Brickwood continued to grow and we ended up with the entire top floor. It was important for me to follow that original advice to start small and test my market."

Christen Edmonds, owner/proprietor of Brickwood Boutique, opened a new location Thursday in Scout Hall on Broadway in Cape Girardeau. A native of Cape Girardeau, Edmonds will operate the women's clothing boutique seven days a week.Submitted

History

Edmonds has been a small-businesswoman for more than a decade, dating to her college days.

"Long story short, in 2011, I was making and selling headbands to my sorority sisters at Mizzou to finance my way for a church mission trip to Africa," she recalled.

"The headbands became very popular on campus. I did a ton of trunk shows during events such as mom's weekends and other events. Honestly, the headbands were kind of an accidental business but I began seeing interest from Missouri boutiques looking for information. We started a website for Bandiez Couture and sold online for awhile," Edmonds added.

"My mom and grandma taught me how to sew and we picked out unique fabrics for the headbands — spandex materials and lace — not just for working out but to wear everyday around campus."

Moving to Indie

"I was expanding my brand online and created a boutique section and became interested in the retail side of things. One of my vendors was Laurie Everett of Annie Laurie's and she had the idea to rehab the historic Indie House. Before too long, I was a tenant there," Edmonds said.

"The Indie House was where everything began with Brickwood. The name came from wanting my shop to be something representing the house, the textures and the old architecture of the house, so when people came in, they would see a nontraditional retail space. I also thought 'Brickwood' was a simple name for people to remember, just two syllables, and if I ever wanted to expand, I wanted to have a flagship store."

Moving to Scout Hall

"I'd always kept my eyes open for an actual storefront for more visibility. I didn't feel I had enough space at Indie House, so I'd been looking at other downtown locations for a couple of years," she said.

"I was sitting with my dad and we were kind of debriefing along Broadway and we saw work going on across the street on what is now Scout Hall," Edmonds explained.

A prospective tenant had backed out of taking the last space available in the building, formerly known as the Rialto, so Edmonds said she decided to sign a lease and move forward.

"It's an amazing location beside Courtyard by Marriott Hotel and it's really opening up the whole midtown of Cape," Edmonds said.

Pandemic memories

"In the fall of 2019, just before COVID hit, I did open another Brickwood in Columbia and had a record spring. I kept the store for two years. The pandemic stifled things and it was a lot of back-and-forth, a lot of travel. Plus, Columbia didn't open up as quickly for business as Cape did. No one was downtown in Columbia for a very long time during the first months of the pandemic. I closed Columbia in November. When I signed the Scout Hall lease, I wanted to focus on a single location and to continue to grow the online business, www.brickwoodboutique.com," Edmonds said.

Details

The new Brickwood Boutique, Edmonds said, has just more than 1,900-square-feet and is open seven days a week — 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays.

The store, which debuted Thursday, has an onsite manager and three sales associates.

"I cater to a wide target market — high school students, the college student, the young professional, moms — and my grandmother shops there as well. I'm inspired by brands such as Free People. I try to find expensive brands and find duplicates for them so they're affordable. I have women's jewelry and accessories. I have a subscription membership, which I think is a unique feature of Brickwood, for $7.99 per month and subscribers can get 25% off at all times," she said.

Tested

"I do have a lot of experience under my belt with this business," said Edmonds, noting her six previous years in Indie House and her use of social media, which she calls "extremely powerful."

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