- April 19, 2024
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The Village Emporium, in Flagler Beach, leases space to 10 budding retail stores. A small-business incubator, it hosted This & That Treasures, which has since relocated and grown to 20 times its store space.
It’s not technically a nonprofit — in terms of grant funding or taxes — but owner of The Village Emporium in Flagler Beach, Marge Barnhill, doesn’t make a dime out of her shop at 209 S. Flagler St.
The setup is unique: a multi-section specialty store, split into 10 departments run by 10 different vendors. The idea was to create a space where small companies could learn the local business landscape before going it alone, jumping into contracts and an uncertain market demand.
Barnhill takes no commission from her tenants’ sales. To cover building expenses, she leases space: $200 a month for a 100-square-foot nook; $100 for a table or wall; $50 for a smaller display.
“Getting the information before you commit to starting a business is what this is all about,” Barnhill says. “It is so helpful to people to understand that.”
Inside are racks of candles and Christmas decorations, jewelry and prayer cards, little black dresses and antique horse saddles.
Barnhill’s mother sits in a chair near the door, smiling, watching. Tenants take turns working the counter and cracking jokes.
A tailor, Sonia Hart, who used to own Flagler Beach’s Silver Belles, cuts and sews quietly at her workstation near the back. She says she used to have a uniform alteration contract with the Navy for 20 years.
The Emporium opened Dec. 4, 2009, about six months before Brenda Brooks, co-owner of This & That Treasures: A Doll Shop, moved in to lease 150 square feet. Since, she’s moved twice into larger locations, and currently rents two suits around the corner, totaling 3,100 square feet.
“It was a very scary thing,” Brooks said of starting her own business.
After only a month in the Emporium, she saw a demand for her product — new and “gently loved” American Girl and other brand dolls, as well as handmade clothing, furniture and accessories. She read the market, then revamped her business plan, adding sewing and jewelry-making classes, as well as girls parties, to her offerings.
“I couldn’t let somebody else start my business for me. I just needed the help to see if it was going to work,” she says.
Brooks describes the Emporium as a co-op. “We support each other,” she says. Tenants share ad costs. They split work hours. An in-house artist has painted signs for some of the neighboring booths.
Barnhill, who owns the Emporium building and other Flagler Beach properties, says she came up with the idea to combat fly-by-night beachside business.
“I get the satisfaction of feeling like I’m helping people … helping the business community here,” she says.
After suffering a car accident which took five years to recover from, Barnhill started seeing the world differently.
“Now it’s time to live life again,” she says. “… Sometimes you need to learn to give back. You really do … Money is just money; it comes and goes. You have to learn to pass it on.”
Taking a lap around the store, Barnhill describes every booth and the people who run them. At the front, she has set up a Fourth of July-themed table with a piece of merchandise from each tenant in the Emporium on display, its own little family of reds, whites and blues.
“That was the best thing that ever happened to me — buying those first shops in Flagler Beach,” she says, straightening items on her display.
The Village Emporium is open seven days a week.
