Gilham House, the former Gilham Funeral Home next to the Morgan County Courthouse, saw a successful soft opening last night.
The building will be the home of several small businesses contained in their own space offering a variety of retail options from owner Colleen Flinn’s Nothing Fancy Supply beeswax wraps to macrame and even vinyl records.
Flinn says the night was all about getting ready for the official opening on Saturday: “Tonight was just our soft opening, so it was just to get our families and friends in to see what we’ve done and to work out the kinks with all of our purchasing options. It went really well. We had a good turn out. Saturday is our grand opening. We are very excited about it. We’ve had a lot of interest on social media, and we hope to have a good turn out for that, too.”
One business that wasn’t able to be set up last night was Pizza Records. She says they are on the way early next month: “Pizza Records is on board, which they sell new and used records. They will be opening in October. Then, we have one more space available. We are hoping that we can make an announcement about that soon.”
Flinn says she’s glad to be back into a permanent retail space with Nothing Fancy Supply to talk to her customers face-to-face after spending the last few years of doing wholesale and online work: “Most of our business is in wholesale, so we are in a lot of stores. It’s a lot different than when I started. We were doing markets and we were in front of people explaining the product. Now, I feel like I get to go back to that, and it’s not just an online buyer from a store that I don’t really have that much of a relationship with. It’s a really good thing to be doing again.”
Flinn says she feels like they’ve hit the finish line for getting things ready for the opening on Saturday as far as continued renovation of the building. She says the last few spaces that are open for new businesses need some continued work and most of the other things that she would like to do is on a wish list.
Gilham House officially opens at 10AM Saturday at 326 West State Street.