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An independent menswear and leather goods shop in downtown Anchorage has shut its doors after being open for less than a year.
The Mercantile, which was housed in a brick storefront on Fourth Avenue across from Sunshine Plaza, shut its doors in April. It held its grand opening in June of last year.
Lifelong Anchorage residents and photographers Mikey Huff and Bex Farleigh, both 23, owned the store. It was their first time running a brick-and-mortar business, and they don't have any specific plans to reopen at another location anytime soon.
“(Business) was steady,” Huff said. “It’s just, we had grandiose ideas that were bigger than what we could execute in that location.”
[The Mercantile brings a Pacific Northwest aesthetic to downtown Anchorage]
Full of rustic furniture and antiques, The Mercantile sold trendy, sometimes pricey men's clothing and accessories, as well as cutting boards, body washes, beard oil, leather pieces made on site, and more.
In the time The Mercantile was open, Huff said he and Farleigh realized the area was more geared toward tourists than the local foot traffic they wanted to appeal to.
“Downtown felt like home to us all our lives. What we realized was most Anchorage folks don’t share that same sentiment with downtown,” he said. “Fourth Avenue became progressively worse the year we’d been down there … Sunshine Plaza in particular had become popular with this transient culture.”
Now, Huff said, they're thinking about what their next move will be. The idea of operating out of a mobile truck is interesting, he said, and their "eyeballs have been on Spenard" as a potential next area to set up shop.