Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I was having lunch at Panera in Sandhill Saturday when I heard someone in an adjacent booth talking about a clothing store that had closed shop recently. I didn't catch the name, but when I stepped outside I saw that it must have been Talbots on the other side of the street that sparked the conversation.

As I hate shopping for clothes in general, and am even more clueless about women's clothes, I really had no mental picture of where Talbots fit on the retail map. A bit of googling however revealed that it is a somewhat upscale chain largely for women over 30, and has been struggling financially for a while now.

There 's an old story, probably apocryphal, about a feed company that hired a top ad agency to design a campaign to sell its dog food. The ads were brilliant, won awards and everyone loved them, but sales plummeted. The company finally hired a troubleshooter who investigated and issued a succinct report: "The dogs don't like the dog food".

The Wall Street Journal gives as delicate a version of that quote as I have ever heard in the words of Talbots's CEO:

The predominant factors impacting our results were an inconsistent customer response to our merchandise assortments..

The article also goes on to posit a lose/lose situation:

The apparel retailer has been trying to freshen the look of its merchandise and broaden its appeal beyond its core audience of older women. But the approach may be turning them off while also not bringing in new customers.

Other papers speculate that the chain may be heading for a takeover, and mention that it is closing 110 of its 568 stores.

Talbots had three stores in the Columbia area. This one, one on Forest Drive and one on Saint Andrews Road. I drove by the Forest Drive store this evening and it is still there. I have not been by the Irmo location.

I had not really been aware of Mary, a small women's clothing store in Five Points until commenter Mike D pointed out that it had closed.

It's an interestingly non-descript name for a store, not even a possessive as in Mary's. For that matter, the sign is nearly impossible to see for the trees during the summer months.

It appears that another clothing store, the neighboring Wish at 719 Saluda Avenue is ready to move up the street into the old Mary location soon.

(Hat tip to commenter Mike D.)

Half-Moon Outfitters has moved from its location by Momo's, Tabouli and Za's up to 2912 Devine Street, the former location of Columbia Photo Supply and Rogers Brothers Fabrics.

Along with renovating the the 2912 building, they've also built a very prominent 5KWH solar array mounted on a "tree" in the parking lot. (For some reason, the linked article gives the address as 2920 despite the very clear 2912 plaque on the building wall).

It appears they somehow resisted my suggestion to re-brand as Full-Moon Outfitters when they moved into a larger space..

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V.I.C. Fashions was in the little Food Lion/Rite Aid strip shopping center in-between Decker Park Road and Brookfield Road. I don't know what V.I.C. stood for, but according to their still extant Myspace page:

We specialize in urban wear, New fashions, shoes, novelty items, anything thats hot, we have! From Request to Diesel, we have all the latest designs and fashion in stock.

I like the facade and walkway of this plaza. It has an old-time look sort of as I recall the original Forest Lake Shopping Center looking.

There was an interesting story in The State about this place a few days ago and how it has been there over 50 years. It seems the current owners do want to retire, but that the usual Main Street problems and changes in dress habits may have hastened that.

New location:

Commenter Chiefa mentioned this closing last week, but I am happy to report that this specialized boutique has simply moved to 3308 Forest Drive, beside Richland Mall and in the same strip and just up from the former Wild Birds Unlimited location.

(Hat tip to commenter Chiefa)

UPDATE 2 March 2024: Fixed spelling of 'boutique'. Added map icon and updated tags.

I'm not much of a clothes shopper, so I've never made it to Weathers of Columbia on Devine Street at Woodrow Street, but it looks as if you want to do so, you should do so soon.

Of course, I thought that in 2008 too, and in fact almost did a closing on them then..

This year's sign is a bit more definitively worded, though their web site doesn't have any mention of it.

American Apparel was a clothes store on Harden Street, next to the old Hiller Hardware. I gather that it served the young, hip, crowd, which is, um, not me.

In fact, for years, I didn't even know where the store was, just that it had a series of mildly risque ads on the back page of the local alternative weekly, The Free Times. These were constant fodder for the paper's Rant & Rave feature, as here, for instance.

When I went by on Saturday 5 Feb, there was still music playing from the store's door speakers, and two guys hanging around like they were supposed to be loading stuff out of there but couldn't get inside.

Doing a little googling turns of the surprising (to me) fact that American Apparel (AMEX: APP) is the largest clothing manufacturer in the United States.. They also seem to have had a good bit of financial trouble in their retail arm lately, as detailed in this WSJ piece and this "Open Market" piece (which also has an image of an ad they could never have run in Columbia..)

The company's web site goes even farther with ads -- DEFINITELY NSFW!

(Hat tip to commenter Jennifer)

UPDATE 12 September 2011 -- The follow-on operation, Urban Thread & More is open, and apparently has been at least since 16 April 2011:

This one was a well planned closing. The "for lease" sign, and the "closing sale" signs had been up for a couple of months before this little store, on Forest Drive right next to Bruegger's Bagels, shut down. I'm assuming it closed at the end of August since month-boundries make sense when you have time to plan, though I didn't notice the vacant space until today.

I never went into Jewelry Mart as it didn't seem targetted at my gender or demographic but one of my aunts did stop in once, and mentioned that the staff was very pleasant and she struck up a conversation, actually leaving with the manager's mix-cd of store music after she complimented him on his taste in songs.

I believe that this is the first vacancy for this little strip. It was all built a few years ago, so up until now it has had the original tenants.

UPDATE 2 Feb 2011 -- It's to be Wristwatch Doc watch sales & repair:

UPDATE 14 Feb 2011 -- apparently Artisan Jewelers is the official name (but why not put that on the roadside sign?):

UPDATE 16 November 2017: Adjust address in post title, add tags.

There were three Goody's locations in Columbia, one on Two Notch Road, one on Bower Parkway and a final one here on Augusta Road in West Columbia. As mentioned in the other posts, the chain went Chapter 11 in 2008 and closed all their Columbia stores.

The one on Bower Parkway has has a couple of temporary tenants like a "Giant Book Sale" and one of those indoor flea-market type things they have at Jamil from time to time. The one on Two Notch is going to have Joann Fabrics as a new tenant, but as far as I know this one near the West Columbia Wal-Mart and I-26 has never had anything set up shop, even on a temporary basis.

The Loopnet listing says there's 31,609 square feet that can be subdivided, but it's been two years already, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

UPDATE 11 March 2021 -- Now a Muv Fitness:

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

UPATE 12 March 2026: Update tags.