Oct. 31, 2024

A new owner is taking over the local marketplace Mulberry Market and moving it to The Empire Mall.

On Friday, Jamie Bendewald becomes the new owner of the business founded by Meghan Anderson and Jaime Meyer two years ago.

Bendewald, who owns an online boutique and a cleaning company, saw online that Mulberry Market was for sale and reached out about the possibility of acquiring it.

“I’d never been in there in my life,” she said. “I always kind of talked about doing something like that in the mall because there’s never been anything like that in the mall. It just happened within the last couple weeks.”

The business will gain visibility in the mall that it lacked at 5303 W. 41st St., next to Marion Road, she said.

“The mall just gets better traffic in general, no matter what, so we’ll move it there and see how it goes,” she said.

She’s leasing half of the former Renegade space across from Applebee’s. That’s about 5,000 square feet, and Bendewald estimates that she can fit merchandise from about 45 vendors. Shoppers will be able to browse them all and check out one time, and there likely will be some space remaining for a handful of new vendors, Bendewald said.

She plans to keep the name Mulberry Market because “they have a good following,” she said. “I just want to get it out there more.”

Her own online business, J Elle Boutique, launched two years ago and will have a booth at Mulberry Market selling women’s apparel and accessories.

The space at 41st Street and Marion Road will offer pop-up shopping during the month of November, while Mulberry Market hopes to open in the mall by Nov. 7.