Denise Kerr and her daughter, Danielle, drove daily to Dallas from their home in a rural neighborhood near Frisco, Texas. Denise taught arts and crafts classes in the city.
During the hour there and back, they’d talk about everything, 225 writes in a feature in the current issue.
The conversation—no matter which direction it went—always circled back to their plans to open a shop together. They wanted a place to host ceramics classes and sell the leather goods Denise made.
“My little dream was, I always told Dani, I want to be in an old house and turn it into a place where you can hang out,” Denise, 51, tells the magazine.“The kind of place where people say, ‘Hey, it’s 3, and we don’t have anything to do until 6. Let’s go to Sweet Leather.’”
Years later, Sweet Leather would wind up being the name of that shop, and a move to Baton Rouge so Danielle could attend LSU helped make it a reality.
Last fall, the 22-year-old used skills she learned through studying graphic design at LSU to brand her mom’s leather line as Sweet Leather Goods. The pair started selling products at the Baton Rouge Arts Market. And within months, Danielle signed the lease on a historic building in the Circa 1857 complex, right next door to The Guru.
It was everything she and her mom had hoped for and more.
