Three months after Painted Tree Boutiques in Clive unexpectedly closed due to bankruptcy, the building owners decided to create their own version of the vendor marketplace to get the doors back open for business.
Painted Tree was a national chain that leased building space to small businesses far under market value. All of its locations across the U.S. claimed bankruptcy in April, which was a surprise to many of the businesses operating out of the Clive location.
Knapp Properties, which owns the building, was stunned when Painted Tree closed. In response, it created Eleven101 Collective, named after the building’s address at 11101 University Ave., to help businesses regain storefronts and continue operating at the same location.
Knapp President and CEO Chris Costa said after seeing how the closure impacted the businesses, he wanted to come up with a solution the businesses could trust.
“We feel we operate with a lot of integrity, so we thought, at the end of the day, if there were a way for us to run this business in a way that gave these vendors the opportunities they thought they needed to be successful, that that ought to be the first route we took,” Costa said.
Costa said the Painted Tree location was operating well, but he thinks it got caught up in issues at the corporate level. Knapp Properties collaborated with Painted Tree staff and decided to bring back the vendor market concept, while updating the bathrooms, point-of-sale system and IT system.
Eleven101 Collective, like Painted Tree, is a vendor marketplace. Small businesses rent storefronts in the building rather than acquiring their own brick-and-mortar stores. This option can be more affordable for shop owners just starting out or entrepreneurs who struggle to find a space that works for their business and their budget.
The marketplace has its own staff, so small businesses keep their storefronts stocked with their items, and the staff manages all the sales and operations. This dynamic allows shop owners to have a presence in Clive while being able to do business in other places.
Costa said the vendors were successful at Painted Tree and a lot of them felt blindsided by the unexpected closure. It was also a huge financial blow for them.
“Obviously, there was a little broken trust,” Costa said. “Because the Painted Tree, it was so out of the blue, where they came in and shut down operations that there were, as we’ve been told, some of the sales that these vendors made, they didn’t get the proceeds.”
Over 300 small businesses were operating out of the Clive Painted Tree when it closed in April. Rose Ann Jordison’s shop, Ivy Rose, was one of them. She is returning to Eleven101 Collective in the hopes that having local ownership will lead to a better outcome.
“Before, we never had a face to the owners,” Jordison said. “They tried to run it like a corporation. Well, these people that are in here, they don’t want to work for a corporation. We’re trying to build our own business and make ourselves independent, and that is where, I think, a lot of it went wrong.”
She thinks having local ownership will lead to better communication, problem solving and more of a local presence.
Costa said the new collective is going to prioritize local decision making.
“Ours will be localized and we’ll be making a decision at the store level instead of at a global level,” he said.
Jordison said her vendor booth is a spin-off of her brick-and mortar store. But she’s had trouble retaining customers at her store due to ongoing construction. She said being at Painted Tree kept her afloat and allowed her to keep the doors of her other location open.
“So, when this closed, we still had the construction going on, so I was very, very nervous about what my outcome was going to be,” she said.
Jordison said she had some hesitations about returning to the vendor marketplace, but she thinks Knapp Properties will be professional and honest. She’s currently putting the finishing touches on her storefront at the collective, and she’s excited to see that there are other familiar faces setting up under the new marketplace.
Eleven101 Collective is now open as vendors continue moving in and setting up their storefronts. Knapp Properties plans to have a formal grand opening this fall.
