Two years after relocating from its longtime home in the Esplanade Shopping Center, at College Drive and Interstate 10, to a new location on Perkins Road near Prairieville, Red Door Interiors is closing.
Owner Erin DeBosier Tew says changes in the retail sector and the August 2016 flood, which didn’t damage her store but negatively impacted its sales, are among the reasons for her decision to shutter the business after nearly 12 years in operation.
The 12,000-square-foot Perkins Road location also didn’t attract as many new customers as Tew had hoped.
“I thought our loyal customers would follow us out there and that we would also pick up other customers on that side of town,” she says. “But sales didn’t increase to the point that it would sustain itself, and then it flooded.”
The store has to vacate its space in the Belle Maison Shopping Center by Oct. 21. But Tew says a lot of the merchandise, which she began selling at a liquidation sale earlier this week, is already gone so she may close sooner.
In the meantime, Tew is concentrating on launching a new interior retail store that she announced earlier this year. That store, SPACES by Erin Tew, will be located in the Southdowns Shopping Center and will be a design/finishing showroom with a variety of design styles. She originally hoped to have the showroom open this summer, but now says it won’t open until mid-September.
“I think there will be a lot more business there,” she says. “I was planning to open it sooner but with build out and trying to organize it—I’m really just a one-man show so everything takes a little longer. But it will be good timing because school is back in, football is going to start, hopefully it will start getting cooler—so it will be a good time to get positive momentum going.”
—Stephanie Riegel
