Longtime downtown shop closes
Staff writer
Operating a downtown shop with a second location outside city limits has become too much like operating two businesses, so Barely Makin-It’s store on Marion’s Main St. has closed.
“It gotten to be so busy out at the mill, it’s like running two businesses at once,” co-owner Marion Ogden said.
Ogden said larger merchandise, such as furniture, will be moved to the mill where they have been offered for years.
Store merchandise can still be purchased.
“We’re trying to sell some stuff online,” Ogden said.
Items customers know are in the store and want to buy can still be purchased in the downtown shop, he said.
“If anyone needs anything right now they can call and we’ll come down and sell it to them,” Ogden said. “I’ve already had somebody contact me wanting to buy the bear off the awning.”
Items such as glassware, lamps, salt and pepper shakers and the like, if not purchased directly from the store will later be offered for sale at an online auction.
Closing the longtime downtown store was not an easy decision for Ogden and his partner, Dennis Maggard.
“We been thinking about it for about a year, but we decided about a month ago,” he said.
Even his wife will miss having a shop downtown.
“My wife feels bad about it because she always enjoyed being down there and doing the window,” he said. “Dennis and I both hate to move out of the place, but it wasn’t conducive to what we were doing.”
Ogden said he’s sad about leaving downtown because he’s always enjoyed being there.
The Ogdens and Maggards bought the 1886 building in 1995 and did a complete rehabilitation of it.
Two apartments upstairs are used for storage. They were not revamped.
Larger items could not be stored in the building, so the mill was later opened to sell them.
The building will be sold.
“We have a prospective buyer,” Ogden said.
Financing for the purchase has not been finalized.