Rug & Relic closes store, shifts business model
Oct. 28, 2020
The owners of Rug & Relic have closed their storefront at the 8th & Railroad Center and changed their business model.
Owners Steve Bormes and Tove Hoff Bormes began the transition earlier this year. They are keeping wholesale operations, and one of their suppliers in Turkey has taken over online retail sales, Hoff Bormes said.
“We’ve been doing wholesale for about five years, but that was not our primary business,” she said of Rug & Relic’s 16-year history. “We’re looking to expand that part of the business.”
Her husband, who still has his art studio in the building, and gallery manager Alix Johnson are spearheading the wholesale efforts.
Initially, the couple intended to keep their space along the boardwalk of the 8th & Railroad Center, allowing another retailer to use the retail storefront while they kept Rug & Relic inventory in the back.
Instead, the business gave up the space.
A haunted house is using it for Halloween, and another retailer will move in next year.
Hoff Bormes planned to let the website that the business built 10 years ago handle the majority of sales but realized “I didn’t want to work that hard. … It’s almost impossible to keep up with inventory,” she said of taking photographs of each item and loading information on the site.
The Turkish supplier has two daughters in New York who will run the website.
“Basically, we are consultants to them, helping them to do that. Our goal is to keep it a prosperous and operating entity but take a lot less of us,” Hoff Bormes said.
That’s a good thing because she’s now the director of development for the Knudson School of Law at USD.
“If you don’t learn anything else in business, nothing turns out like you planned, and you better be adaptable. That offer was a big impetus for us to say ‘Let’s not do this.’”
