The Story of DART Boutique - Ch.2

Chapter 2: The Move to Tea

After we decided to reclaim our basement as a family space instead of a business, we decided to look for retail space options to open a traditional storefront.  Since our children were open enrolled to the Tea school district and our church is located in Tea, we thought it was a no-brainer to open my store there.

After looking at a few options, we discovered that the former Lauriebelle’s space was available for rent.  They had previously expanded and built their own stand-alone building.  There were changing rooms, floor to ceiling mirrors and a large front counter already in the space.  It seemed like an easy choice to set up shop in that strip center.

I signed the lease in January 2019 and began setting up our first brick and mortar store.  It was a labor of love from our friends who helped us with new light fixtures, painting, assembling furniture, packaging and tagging inventory, hanging shelves, and installing new doors and trim.  We also had new LVP flooring put in.  In addition to the boutique, we decided to rent other units in the center and expand my piano lesson teaching area and photography studio.  After months of hard work and hiring our initial staff, we were ready to open!  We held our grand opening at the end of March 2019.  

My favorite part about our Tea store was that we had so much room to fill and expand.  We created a Kid Zone area with toys for them to play with while the moms shopped.  We had a lounge with a couch, TV, game table, popcorn machine, cookie oven, and fridge with complimentary beverages.  We even had a PacMan machine that was free for anyone to play.

Through the lounge we had another room solely dedicated to our clearance area.  In the back space we had a music lesson room, additional storage, and a photography studio with its own separate entrance.  It was everything I had dreamed of owning and I loved the store SO much!  2019 was a great year for us and we were looking forward to the future.

An additional space in our complex was opening and with our wild plans for success, I took the leap and rented that unit as well.  We occupied 3 of the 6 business units in our strip center.  I opened DART Studio on the backside of the building. I hired some music teachers to help with the music portion and we taught approximately 60 students each week in piano, voice, guitar, and drum lessons.  We created 2 separate photo studio spaces so I could start my photography business back up again.  We also used those areas for our boutique modeling pictures.  

Then came COVID. Wild. We could never have predicted this monumental setback.  We did everything we could to keep our doors open and survive.  We used a space in the studio to start creating our own products to sell in the store. Our saving grace was the ability to get the PPP funding to maintain payroll and I took out a hefty EIDL loan to keep things rolling.  After things opened back up in the world, the economy was still pretty shaky.  Luckily, there was a huge push for everyone to Shop Local and Shop Small.  We were all struggling and those who could, were instrumental in helping to sustain us and begin the rebuilding process. We expanded the studio and started teaching weekly art lessons, additional homeschool music classes, and rented out the space to others who could benefit from using our extra offices.

The next year was spent trying to build the business back to where it should have been if not for COVID.  Things were going well and we decided to look at expanding into Sioux Falls.  For approximately 6 months I looked for the right space to open a 2nd location.  In November of 2021, I signed a lease on our current space in The Bridges.  We kept everything a secret as we were setting up and preparing the store.  It was so fun to keep this secret!  We would post little hints about our big news.  Finally, we were ready to announce our grand opening set for January 2022.

Stay tuned for Chapter 3 about what happened with our Tea store and learn about our current store location.

More photos from the Tea store days...