Stoney Shire Mercantile cancels its plans for Hulbert House store
There will be no Stoney Shire Mercantile in the Hulbert House.
Instead, the team behind the Stoney Shire enterprise will redirect focus to the website, where local artisans can list and sell hand-made items and antiques.
When they made plans to expand their operation into a brick-and-mortar location inside the Hulbert House, they did not anticipate rocky global times and soaring inflation.
“We certainly jump into things without hesitation, however we also take carefully calculated steps to ensure stability and growth of this social enterprise,” entrepreneur and co-founder of the Stoney Shire, Timothy Sturdevant said.
“However, what we could not predict is the invasion of Ukraine and the effect it would have globally. We took close to a 70% hit in our sales even as we still list a tremendous amount each week and continually expand our outreach with our items and cause,” Sturdevant said.
“We are quite tenacious in our efforts to provide crafters, vendors, and artisans of all sorts a stable platform to sell, buy and trade their products. This is just one step towards our main 15-year goal for the whole Stoney Shire Design,” the co-founder added.
After the plug was pulled on the recently announced Stoney Shire Mercantile, they spent a few days debating on what the next steps were going to be.
The Stoney Shire team still wanted a central hub for locals to be able to showcase their items and to be able to grow their business.
What they settled on was a plan to redo the website to enable members to list their products much like a Craigslist, eBay, Pinterest and Etsy put together in one.
“This site will just be exclusively designed for the local community and their goods for the time being,” Sturdevant said. “We hope artists, crafters and other artisans locally will enjoy the use of our site as we have spent quite some time going back and forth with an excellent website designer to ensure ease of use and flexibility for all involved.”
Despite the disappointment of having to change plans, the team is looking forward to the future of their venture.
“It was a hard decision to make,” Sturdevant said. “The Hulbert House was a very appealing place for our mercantile, being right in the town of Boonville and the historical value it holds.”
“We really didn’t want to see the section where the mercantile was going to reside be turned into apartments. However, this was a decision we had to make to ensure that we can keep growing the platform to have a large reach,” Sturdevant added.
“For now we will keep on pushing as the website is already in the process of its new design. While we wait, we will do what we do best and all we know how to do, we will keep pushing for a better tomorrow,” he said.
