Cotswold Marketplace expands after two-year anniversary

Multi-merchant retailer Cotswold Marketplace has expanded its square footage and is continuing to grow after celebrating its second anniversary, owner Melissa Vandiver said.

The store, at 200 North Sharon Amity Road, has doubled its selling space, to 7,000 square feet. "We thought we'd just start small and enjoy it, but demand was strong," said Vandiver, who runs the shop with her daughter.

They opened the interiors store in June 2010, as Vandiver was thinking of getting back into retail and her daughter wanted to use her design degree.

Vandiver said she was "raised in retail." Her mother ran a women's boutique for more than three decades in Little Rock, Arkansas. "That was my tutelage, and eventually my husband and I ended up in Charlotte," Vandiver said. She opened a Myers Park gift store, but chose to leave the business after having kids.

Now that she's back, Vandiver said she's happy with the variety Cotswold Marketplace offers. "There's quite a variety here, first house up to investment pieces," she said. "Quirky, shabby chic, some of what grandmother had, all the way up to and beyond contemporary chrome and glass."

The store is one of several multi-merchant format stores that have started in Charlotte in the past few years, including Slate Interiors and Alexander Scott.

"When you've got a start-up business, every day is a new day, and every quarter's a new quarter, and you don't know how to project," she said. "It's very comfortable at this point to see a growth projection, and be able to see the ebbs and flows of retail and how we can best respond to that."


She hopes to see the store continue to grow, and already has her four-month-old granddaughter attending staff meetings. "Lots of people work hard," Vandiver said. "We just happen to enjoy it."



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