Sometimes a neighborhood gets a little too nice.
George Nickolaou has reopened his refurbished-furniture store, Renew 4 You, across town after the rent went up at the Shops at Willow Lawn. And now the former Circuit City worker is trying to get the word out the business is still up and running, just in a new location.
Nickolaou, 39, is now in the Post Office Square on Patterson Avenue, selling new, used and hand-painted furniture.
For a year and a half, the store was on the outside of the Willow Lawn shopping mall.
“Every month it was growing,” Nickolaou said.
The shop moved to the inside of the mall under a 12-month temporary lease agreement from Federal Realty Trust, owner of the shopping center. As rent prices increased and other spaces were snatched up, Nickolaou decided to take his business elsewhere. A Chick-fil-A operates there now.
The switch was painful, but it is starting to work out, Nickolaou said: “Nobody in Richmond is doing this. We create one-of-a-kind pieces of art that function as furniture.”
Nickolaou and his wife fill their shop with new and used furniture from estate sales and auctions. They also take old furniture and redesign, reupholster and repaint it.
Before starting his own business, the Richmond native worked for Haynes, the North Carolina furniture company. More recently, he spent four years at Circuit City but had to find a new job when the electronics superstore shut down in 2009.
“Art design has always been my forte,” said Nickolaou. “I’ve always been intrigued by mixing art and furniture.”
Nickolaou and his wife started out small hand-painted children’s furniture in their garage and grew to selling pieces at craft fairs and other places before getting the idea for their own business.
“The house started filling up, and we began building a name and getting requests, and my wife mentioned that I should get into selling furniture for myself,” Nickolaou said.
He had his eye on the Post Office Square location for more than a year.
“We knew about a couple of spots, but all the windows attracted us to this place,” he said. “My wife has a talent for window displays.”
The space used to be Freda’s, a women’s apparel store, but has been empty for the past three years.
Nickolaou leased the 2,373-square-foot space Jan. 1 and held his soft opening of Renew 4 You two weeks later.
He has three part-time employees who do some of the furniture’s artwork, and the rest is handled by Nickolaou and his wife.
A design center is in the works for the new store where he can create samples for customers to get an idea of what their furniture will look like.
He’s also working on expanding his services and building up his customer base to what it once was at Willow Lawn.
“We’re hoping to reach and surpass what we were doing at Willow Lawn. I want to get the community to understand that it’s custom-made and it’s for the average family.”
Sometimes a neighborhood gets a little too nice.
George Nickolaou has reopened his refurbished-furniture store, Renew 4 You, across town after the rent went up at the Shops at Willow Lawn. And now the former Circuit City worker is trying to get the word out the business is still up and running, just in a new location.
Nickolaou, 39, is now in the Post Office Square on Patterson Avenue, selling new, used and hand-painted furniture.
For a year and a half, the store was on the outside of the Willow Lawn shopping mall.
“Every month it was growing,” Nickolaou said.
The shop moved to the inside of the mall under a 12-month temporary lease agreement from Federal Realty Trust, owner of the shopping center. As rent prices increased and other spaces were snatched up, Nickolaou decided to take his business elsewhere. A Chick-fil-A operates there now.
The switch was painful, but it is starting to work out, Nickolaou said: “Nobody in Richmond is doing this. We create one-of-a-kind pieces of art that function as furniture.”
Nickolaou and his wife fill their shop with new and used furniture from estate sales and auctions. They also take old furniture and redesign, reupholster and repaint it.
Before starting his own business, the Richmond native worked for Haynes, the North Carolina furniture company. More recently, he spent four years at Circuit City but had to find a new job when the electronics superstore shut down in 2009.
“Art design has always been my forte,” said Nickolaou. “I’ve always been intrigued by mixing art and furniture.”
Nickolaou and his wife started out small hand-painted children’s furniture in their garage and grew to selling pieces at craft fairs and other places before getting the idea for their own business.
“The house started filling up, and we began building a name and getting requests, and my wife mentioned that I should get into selling furniture for myself,” Nickolaou said.
He had his eye on the Post Office Square location for more than a year.
“We knew about a couple of spots, but all the windows attracted us to this place,” he said. “My wife has a talent for window displays.”
The space used to be Freda’s, a women’s apparel store, but has been empty for the past three years.
Nickolaou leased the 2,373-square-foot space Jan. 1 and held his soft opening of Renew 4 You two weeks later.
He has three part-time employees who do some of the furniture’s artwork, and the rest is handled by Nickolaou and his wife.
A design center is in the works for the new store where he can create samples for customers to get an idea of what their furniture will look like.
He’s also working on expanding his services and building up his customer base to what it once was at Willow Lawn.
“We’re hoping to reach and surpass what we were doing at Willow Lawn. I want to get the community to understand that it’s custom-made and it’s for the average family.”
The Nickolaou’s do beautiful work. I have no doubt they will be very successful in the new location.
Very cool place and it’s great to see small biz picking up.