After hosting its grand opening event last week,
Coastal Cruisin’ Threads is bringing the spirit of the shoreline to Gaslight Village in East Grand Rapids with its new West Coast-inspired retail space at 2249 Wealthy St. SE.
Co-owner Lydia Fotis-Sweetman says the shop will not only offer lifestyle apparel for women and men, shoes, accessories, jewelry, longboards and other gift items, but also carry sought-after brands like O’Neil, Quiksilver, Roxy, and Maui Jim for both summer and winter seasons with additional plans to both sell and rent out paddle boards for use on neighboring Reeds Lake.
“Instead of going all of the way out to Lake Michigan to rent a paddle board, we thought it’d be nice to have somewhere right here in town you could just come down to and pick one up and take it out for an hour or half a day,” says Fotis-Sweetman, who has been renovating Suite 140 at 2249 Wealthy St. SE for the past six months with her business partner Ryan Taylor.
The retail space saw a host of remodeled features, including a brand new floor with fixtures made from barn wood and new dressing rooms, throughout the 2,400-square-foot ground floor.
“We both really like thrift-shop type of things, we travel and we like going into thrift shops,” Fotis-Sweetman says. “We love the brands that we're carrying. There really isn't anything like this around town, so it's kind of new and fresh. So, we wanted to bring that all together with the stand-up paddle boards in town as well, with the rental and the sales.”
She says Coastal Cruisin’ Threads plans on hosting more community events in the future centered around paddle board yoga classes and non-competitive races that will be announced on its Facebook page as the store continues to hit the ground running this summer.
“It's fresh,” she says. “We've had a lot of good feedback from people who really love the brands we're carrying…and also just the atmosphere, the feeling of the store itself — it's not like a regular store you'd walk into at the mall. It's got more of a beach feeling to it.”
To learn more about
Coastal Cruisin’ Threads and stay updated on future community events,
visit them on Facebook.
Written by Anya Zentmeyer, Development News Editor
Images courtesy of Coastal Cruisin’ Threads
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