Flower Child shop blossoms in new location
Vintage retailer opens in ex-warehouse as rents in old locale spike.
Flower Child, the vintage clothing and home goods retailer that has been a Short North landmark for more than a decade, will open a new location today in a former Italian Village warehouse.
“It’s three times bigger or more than the old store,” said owner Joe Valenti, who opened the first Flower Child store in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood 20 years ago and the Columbus shop almost a dozen years ago.
The Short North store, at 989 N. High St., will close at the end of the month.
The move into the new 33,000-square-foot location was necessitated by the booming real estate market in the Short North. Valenti said his rent was due to jump from $4,000 a month to $41,000 a month at the old store.
“We would have basically been buying (the building owner) a small Mercedes each month,” he said, chuckling.
It took six months to revamp the old air-conditioner warehouse at 233 E. 5th Ave. Valenti and colleagues added 18-foot-high windows in front and tore out the second floor to create a spacious main floor.
“I was general contractor,” Valenti said, sighing. “This is the biggest project we’ve ever done.”
A parking lot will be built across the street from the new location in the next year, serving Flower Child and the rapidly expanding number of restaurants and other developments in the North Fourth Street and East Fifth Avenue area.
That includes Seventh Son Brewing as well as the Budd Dairy Food Hall under development.
The new Flower Child continues the previous store’s assortment of clothing, magazines, kitchen items, furniture, concert posters and other items from decades past.
With the bigger store, Flower Child has space enough for full displays of such things as a “modern” 1950’s living room, a sci-fi 1970’s kitchen and a 1960’s tiki bar, as well as an expanded record department and a large rack of Playboy magazine issues from 40 and 50 years ago.
In addition to the store’s own selection, 12 vendors who range in age from 17 to 60 have individual areas in the upstairs loft. Several first-timers have joined carry-overs from the former store, including a Chinese anime artist “and a (Columbus College of Art and Design) student who does ’80s and ’90s merchandise,” Valenti said.
“Whoever thought ’90s would be vintage? But to them ‘Friends’ is like ‘Brady Bunch’ was to us, so it makes sense. Everything old is new again.”
The vendors “have spent months scouring nearby states looking for perfect things in anticipation of the new store,” said Carrie Ferrell of Columbus, who has been a Flower Child vendor for three years, selling clothing, records and furniture, particularly mid-century modern from the ’50s and ’60s.
“I can’t even tell you how excited I am,” Ferrell said. “I loved the old store, but this new space is so gorgeous. I have seen how much a lot of us, particularly Joe, have put into this. To see people’s reaction when it opens is going to be very, very exciting.”
Strolling into the back of the store, Valenti pointed to a wall of clothing neatly divided by decades.
“We do a lot of movies (costuming), so if they want to do ’70s (era clothing), here it is,” he said. Moving a ladder on rollers down the aisle to a rack loaded with big-shouldered dresses, he added:
“Or the ’80s, we have that right here . ... And we still cater to the boho hippy crowd.”