“‘So let me get this straight. Everything in your house is for sale?’ And I looked over at my husband, and I said, ‘Well, right now he’s not, but that could change.’”
– Sharon Nelson on a conversation she had with a customer in her home before she opened Nelson Designs at the Shops at Tallgrass
UPDATED — A former Norwalk Furniture & Design neighbor is ready to take its space.
Nelson Designs, which has been in the Shops at Tallgrass since late 2009, is expanding there in March.
“It’s another 2,000 square feet, which we definitely need, and it’s a lot closer to 21st Street so the visibility is going to be great,” owner Sharon Nelson says. “That’s a big part of it.”
Nelson opened her design business in the heart of the economic crisis “when the rest of the world was saying, ‘You are absolutely crazy,’ but I think it’s worked,” she says.
Her first store was 1,400 square feet.
“Of course, we opened it when the economy was horrible, so I wasn’t too sure how it was going to go.”
Within a year, though, she more than doubled her space to 3,158 square feet.
Now, she’s out of room.
For instance, in the area where she sells wood and tile flooring, Nelson says, “It is so jam-packed in there with our fabrics for drapery and upholstery, people don’t know what all we sell.”
The business now has five designers instead of the two that the store started with.
Nelson had been running the business out of her home initially.
“Until our expansion we had to keep our fabrics in the bathroom so you can imagine how much better it is to be able to view them now!”
— Sharon Nelson of Nelson Designs in an e-mail about her new expansion at the Shops at Tallgrass
WICHITA — As Hugs & Hissyfits expands at the Shops at Tallgrass by taking the former Marshmallow Kisses space, neighbor Nelson Designs is expanding by taking the Hugs space and keeping its own, too.
“We’re . . . more than doubling our size within a year,” says Sharon Nelson, who opened her design business in the center at 21st and Rock in October 2009.
Prior to that, she worked with clients out of her house.
“It was our clients who kept saying, ‘You really need to open a store,’ ” Nelson says.
The new combined 3,158-square-foot space will be ready in early November.
April Reed, who handled the deal for developer Slawson Cos., says this is the third tenant to expand at the center in six months, including Hugs & Hissyfits and Frou Frou.
This is “the strongest tenant mix the center has ever had,” she says. “Our efforts to attract and create a design center have been paying off.”
Nelson Designs carries drapes, accessories and tile and wood flooring, among other things.
“We try to make it a one-stop shop,” Nelson says.
Even though she opened her storefront at a tough economic time, Nelson says she has done well.
“We really try to be very careful with our prices,” she says.
“Wichita has been good to us.”
WICHITA — Sharon Nelson’s new next-door neighbor will be an old friend, but that’s not what’s prompting her to move to the Shops at Tallgrass.
Nelson owns Nelson Designs, which will move next to where World Import Gallery is locating at the center at 21st and Rock.
Philip Holmes is renaming his Gallery the Rug Studio and moving in September.
Nelson is moving into 1,400 square feet in early October — she just signed a lease Thursday.
“Which is just so ironic because neither one of us knew,” Nelson says of herself and Holmes. “Isn’t that amazing?”