WICHITA — The end of Three Pea Interiors means the beginning of a couple of new businesses and the expansion of a third.
Jolene Holdaway closed her Three Pea shop late last year and is preparing to open Red Nest Interiors in the former Esprit de Fleur space at 2907 E. Douglas early next month.
“I absolutely had to have more room,” Holdaway says of showroom and storage space.
She had been sharing space with Three Pea Staging and Design in the former Crandall’s Interiors furniture space on East Second Street.
Owners Gary Streepy and Kirsten Awe were wanting to expand their business as well.
Monty Stuber, whose Montage salon also is in the Esprit building, offered Holdaway some storage space that eventually turned into a lease agreement.
Holdaway thought making a complete split from the Three Pea name would be less confusing for customers.
Also, she’s changing her business slightly by incorporating some older pieces into her showroom.
“I hate to use the word antique,” Holdaway says. “I’m going to offer just some kind of unique finds, if you want to call them that, for people’s homes.”
She especially likes that she’ll now be in the Douglas Design District.
Streepy and Awe, who have spent the last four years staging homes to help them sell, have renamed their business Three Pea: Organize, Stage, Design.
“We’ve kind of grown to where we buy furniture,” Streepy says. “We started accumulating some things.”
And they decided to accumulate some more by also opening Pea Pod Consignment Gallery in their Three Pea space.
Streepy says people can submit pictures of furniture they’d like to place on consignment. If he accepts them, there will be free pick-up service.
The shop opens Monday.
Over on Douglas, Stuber has reshuffled some of the businesses in his buildings there.
“I want to move more retail over in here,” he says. “It clusters more people closer together with similar ideas.”
And he thinks the home-grown businesses locating there are a natural fit with the Design District.
“We have all the things that bring people to it, and retail is just a natural because we already have the demographic of people here,” he says.
“I just want to see things grow and continue to progress.”