Charleston entrepreneurs face rising costs, competition for commercial property and are often small players up against corporate interests. Plus, COVID-era rules introduced all new kinds of business challenges.
Despite that, many Charlestonians are opening new businesses, expanding and sustaining existing ones, and bearing witness as some industries take Charleston by storm.
Two new businesses which open next month, Wake Refill, a zero waste refill store on downtown’s Eastside, and Top Cheer Talent, a cheerleading gym in the Citadel Mall, are recent participants of “Commercial Space 101,” a free program from Lowcountry Local First (LLF). It seeks to help businesses ready to launch into their first brick-and-mortar location.
“Opening a brick and mortar can feel totally overwhelming and first timers often don’t know what they don’t know,” said LLF’s executive director, Jacquie Berger. “Lowcountry Local First is here to offer support and to ensure these new local businesses start off on the right foot.”
In early September, Top Cheer Talent will open in Citadel Mall to provide a dedicated cheerleading gym for Charleston cheer teams, coaches and high school students who want to pursue college cheering activities. First-time entrepreneur Theresa Duncan said she’s fulfilling a lifelong dream with her new business and is excited to provide “a space for cheerleaders to learn and grow in this sport.”
Also celebrating a ribbon-cutting in September is Wake Refill at 698 Rutledge Ave., a building across from Hampton Park that was once a pharmacy. In that same building (along with a new space for local jewelers AL&EM, facial studio Isabel and more) is the new location for coffee shop and retail store, Sightsee, formerly on Line Street.
Unique stores fight urban mall-ification
Sightsee co-founders Joel Sadler and Allyson Sutton explained their business was born out of deep conviction about brick-and-mortar retail and “a desire to help shape the future of our beloved city,” according to their website: “We believe that small, unique storefronts play an essential role in the vibrancy and vitality of cities. Without local retail, our towns become urban malls with fancy food courts. And Charleston is especially at risk of that plight. “
Their May move into the new, bigger space means the duo is able to expand the retail part of their mixed-concept vision for Sightsee. They carry fellow small business items in their shop, mostly from women-owned and eco-friendly vendors, they said. “Having two symbiotic businesses helps keep the other afloat,” Sutton said.
Sadler frames the Sightsee concept and local retail in general as an antidote to the “urban mall.”
“Think about the peninsula and imagine there aren’t independent retail shops, like Sightsee, like our neighbor J. Stark. What do you have? Places to eat and drink and chain stores,” he said. “It’s just fundamentally not the type of city that someone wants to live in.
“If you are trying to find something independent, you’re stuck scrolling Instagram. The retail aspect of what we do allows people in the real world to have an opportunity to tangibly interact with great products, great brands, and by extension, people.”
Shelly Bellil, one half of the female entrepreneurial team behind the James Island shop Local Love Charleston, expressed a similar sentiment on why sustaining local retail is important in a changing Charleston.
“Local makers – that’s the heart of what makes Charleston unique to any other place.” At Local Love Charleston, which celebrates five years in business next month, you’ll find locally-made items that shed light on the unique culture of the Lowcountry.
“Coming back into the retail world post-Covid, we’ve seen costs go up with supplies for makers, which makes their product costs go up. It’s a vicious cycle,” Bellil said. “So educating our customers why prices have gone up, that’s been a challenge….. But doing this, you just hear so many genuine comments about how they appreciate what we’re doing and bringing people together.
“Owning a small business is hard. But what you get out of it is just so beneficial.”
Wedding boom
One of the industries that has exploded in Charleston in the last decade, according to statistics from Explore Charleston, is the wedding industry.
“Charleston is now the #2 most popular wedding destination in the country only behind Las Vegas,”said Doug Warner, an Explore Charleston vice president.
According to the organization’s 2022 wedding report, the wedding industry generated more than $123 million in sales for Charleston County. That estimate represented a 15% increase from 2021 and a 47% increase from pre-pandemic levels in 2019) It’s also worth noting, Warner said, that when brides and grooms come to Charleston, they bring their families and guests who fill up hotels, eat at restaurants and spend all sorts of money on tourist attractions.
“The wedding industry has been really important to Charleston as a community for a long time,” Warner said, “It is somewhat recession-proof. Because we have had such a strong wedding industry, we’ve weathered downturns in our economy better than most other locations.”
With all this growth, lots of out-of-town talent, vendors and planners are often brought in, said some local professionals, including a DJ and two wedding florists — all of whom encouraged that Charleston brides and grooms should opt to use local vendors for wedding needs so that those who work and live in this industry can enjoy the boom, too.
Learn more about local business at lowcountrylocalfirst.org, scsbc.org, charlestonchamber.org and explorecharleston.com. Learn about the businesses mentioned here at sightseeshop.com, locallovechs.com, wakerefill.com and topcheertalent.com.
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