Cool Digs officially closed its storefront at 593 E. State St. after 13 years in business Saturday, due to slow sales and increased costs from suppliers.
Cool Digs previously had another location on West Union Street, which also closed last February, due to the construction outside The Lostro, obstructing pedestrian traffic. A New Orleans-style funeral march was organized by Sara Quoia Bryant, the owner of Cool Digs, to honor and acknowledge the loss of her West Union business, according to a previous report from The Post.
Bryant said sales were slow for the shop over the last year, especially with its garden supply, which was essential to business profits. She said it was “a different ball game” when they opened, as fewer people were shopping online, and many would visit the store in person.
“As our suppliers move online, and they don't know what's going on with tariffs and shipping prices go up, our bottom line is thinner and thinner,” Bryant said. “We used to be able to support two full-time staff all the time, and the payroll has been really hard the last six months or so, which leads to me having to be one of the two people on staff, and then after a while, it just gets tiring.”
Bryant said they will be moving to Peddlers Junction Vendor Mall, located on 1002 E. State St., and at DiaPanacea, a by-appointment energy and body-work studio, located on 94 Columbus Road.
Bryant said she put a lot of time and energy into her West Union storefront and spoke at the town-hall meeting she held last January to urge the city to remove the construction blocking her building and sidewalk.
“According to the mayor's office, there were no solutions coming out of our camp,” Bryant said. "But we did that whole town hall, right? I had over 200 people show up on a 17-degree night because they want to support small business, right? The city still wouldn't make those guys get off the sidewalk.”
Bryant said she thinks the city does not care about small businesses in Athens, except when it comes to getting a business up and running. Bryant said she already sold all of her garden supplies to Superior Hydroponics, a hydroponic grow supply business in Cincinnati.
“Over the years, we've employed a lot of people and put kids through school and all that,” Bryant said. “We could have a lot more of that here if we had a city that was accountable to small business and not just big development.”
Bryant has also been working with Vivid since she closed her West Union location, a multimedia consulting organization at OU, working to support and uplift Athens. A group of seven has been taking photos of Bryant’s crystals, helping with her social media and creating a new logo. They’re currently working on a website for the shop as well.
“We have to grow and do different things when the things we're doing aren't working,” Bryant said. “Getting into a more of an online presence I think will be great for the rocks.”
Bryant also said the shop does all of its own tie-dye and plans on doing lots of tie-dye in her free time, especially since she missed out on a lot of dyeing time during the pandemic, while she was so busy with her garden supply.
“We were busy for all that,” Bryant said. “I didn't get much tie-dye done at all, so being able to get more art done is something I’m looking forward to. I figure we'll do more of the Boogie On The Bricks and stuff like that because we'll have more time to set up.”
Bryant also plans on being more involved in the community and said Athens needs an ombudsman, an official dedicated to solving issues between two groups. She said she will spend her time writing the community ombudsman paperwork and attaching the accountability act to it.
“If you're an administrative official and you don't stick up for our town and you don't make (developers) follow the rules, then you're going to lose your job, and that's going to be your accountability,” Bryant said. “What we would need, though, is someone who could be on the side of the people and could be kind of the instrument for the accountability act.”
Many Athens residents and visitors can recall a time they visited Cool Digs, and some folks are saddened to see the two storefronts close after all its years in business.
Navah Young, an undecided freshman at Ohio University, said she grew up in Athens near East State Street and visited the shop for more than ten years. As a kid, she said she purchased a pendulum dangling in the store window because the light was shining through it in a pretty way.
“(It) definitely is sad,” Young said. “I really did like it there, and they seemed like really good people.”
Ellaina Hess, a senior studying media arts production, said she visited the storefront on West Union a couple of times and walked by it often as she lived nearby on West Green. She said Cool Digs had a lot to look at, and it was one of the only places she could get her partner Disc Golf gifts. Hess said the closing of Cool Digs is a good reminder for folks to shop local.
“It's really sad to hear, because it was a really cool local business,” Hess said. “I used to go to Import House all the time, too. To hear two really cool, kind of indie, eclectic stores going out of business, and it just keeps happening, it’s really disheartening, because I feel like a lot of people around Athens like that kind of stuff.”
