(WSB photo by Patrick Sand)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Linda Walsh has a clearance sale going right now at her West Seattle Junction shop, Clementine.
This isn’t just any old clearance sale. It’s also a moving sale: She’s leaving West Seattle and moving her shop to Pioneer Square.
It’s been eight years now since, in the early months of WSB, we noticed the “coming soon” sign on papered-over windows of what had been a tanning salon at 4447 California SW.
The shoes, handbags, and other accessories Walsh has sold in the ensuing years have received acclaim and attention citywide. Yet making a go of it as a bricks-and-mortar business in an increasingly digital world hasn’t been easy, as Walsh and the proprietor of nearby Carmilia’s, Linda Sabee, told us in this WSB story a year ago. Yet Walsh says she’s not ready to give up on in-person shopping … after eight years, she says, she feels like she finally has a handle on how things should work.
But she’s going to deploy the knowledge elsewhere soon. Walsh says her new Pioneer Square space at 310 Occidental (a former lighting store) just seems to be a better place for what she does and offers. Office workers will be there during the day. Tourists will be there during the summer.
Besides the location, her new storefront will bring a few changes – it’s bigger than her cozy Junction space, including some basement. And Walsh will change the name a bit – it will now be Clementine’s. (Her web address has always been clementines.com, anyway.)
In the meantime, the aforementioned clearance sale continues. She told us today, “I hope not to have to move a single shoe.”
She also hopes for a seamless move to the new space without much, if any, downtime, intending to open there by early September.
SIDE NOTE: Hers is the second business to announce it’s about to leave the block of California SW north of Oregon – as reported here two weeks ago, Shoofly Pie Company is closing in mid-August; no new location in this case – they say they’re just getting out of the retail business.
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