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Rick Paynter, owner of Shop Local Kentucky. Photo by Sarah Jane Sanders.
Lexington-based e-commerce shop Shop Local Kentucky is gearing up to open its first seasonal, brick-and-mortar shop, located in the Woodland Avenue location that formerly housed Scheller's Bike Shop.
Rick Paynter, who started the company last year, said he hopes to open the 1,000-square-foot shop by the end of September. It will remain open through the end of the year – “unless we decide to stay,” he said.
“We’re taking the smaller side of Scheller’s - most people will recognize it as the actual bike shop - and we’re hoping that it goes well enough that we can take over both sides, take that lease and extend it on,” said Paynter.
Since opening in 2014, Shop Local Kentucky has grown from a three-man, mom-and-pop style t-shirt shop run by Paynter and his wife, to a company nearing a staff of eight, that ships its products world-wide. Utilizing Paynter's background in digital marketing, the company has traditionally used the social media photo sharing platform Instagram as its main line of communication, with nearly 50,000 followers on that site.
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Shop Local Kentucky's products include Kentucky-themed t-shirts, sweatshirts, jewelry and other accessories. Photo by Sarah Jane Sanders.
“Business-wise, we’re finding ourselves reaching into different areas and being able to come out with new products quicker and a little more diversity than we had beforehand,” he said. The company is working non a new line of raglan sweatshirts that will be hand-sewn in Kentucky that Paynter feels will be a popular item this holiday season.
Until recently, Shop Local Kentucky printed all of its products, which includes family-friendly apparel featuring Kentucky-centric slogans, by hand in it's Lexington warehouse; recently the company struck up a deal with an Ashland-Ky.- based apparel print shop called Print My Thread, which now handles a heavy volume of Shop Local Kentucky’s larger printing needs.
Shop Local Kentucky approached Block + Lot real estate group this summer about helping them find a seasonal location. While they were originally looking in the Distillery District, the popular Woodland Avenue shop came to the table, they couldn't pass up the opportunity.
“We were able to work out a small, seasonal lease - [Block + Lot has] been fantastic and kind of instrumental in finding it and putting it all together for us,” Paynter said.
In addition to carrying all the Shop Local products currently available online, Paynter is working with some local artisans to carry some additional Kentucky-based products, from bourbon barrel products to beard oil – “not really typical Kentucky Proud products, but weirder, more kitschy items,” Paynter said.
The shop plans to keep Wed. - Sun. business hours. Follow Shop Local Kentucky for more details and updates.