This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
The Hidden Treasure 2, the crafts consignment store with quality crafts and handmade goods, owned/operated locally by Sandra Noonan and Betty Aldrich, recently expanded next-door and tripled its square footage just above 23rd and Main St.
Together, they started Craft Through the Generations in 2014, an Etsy store, and it all boomeranged from there. Since they already had a following of customers from doing craft shows, they sold a good deal of merchandise both online and locally. They sold mostly crochet or knit blankets, hats and stuffed animals. Grandma Betty did sewing projects. Due to the success at the brick-and-mortar store, they ended up closing the Etsy store earlier this year, but it wasn't always an easy journey to where they are now.
“Before Sandra came to Colorado, I was doing craft shows in my home. And it was fun, lots of fun and lots of people came. Then Sandra came, and we did one big craft show in my home and then we talked about it and said that maybe we should have a business,” Aldrich said. “Then, we started doing craft shows in Niwot in 2014. We do at least two in Niwot every year at the Grange, and the Niwot people support us. It just kinda got bigger and bigger.”
The two ladies had also gone to craft shows throughout northern Colorado at the time. Not just their own craft shows, but participated in others in Longmont, Loveland, Fort Collins, and the surrounding area. They would do craft shows from September to the week before Christmas, every weekend, and it became demanding work setting up and tearing down each weekend and keeping up with inventory.
“It got too big, having the Etsy store, our craft shows, and this store, so we had 3 avenues of places of production. This time last year, we were overwhelmed because we had Etsy, shows, and shop. Our shows, we cut down to the two we host in Niwot each year, one in the spring and one in October, during their Harvest Fest. We have been doing those for 4 years,” Sandra said.
The Longmont Amateur Radio Club (LARC), has had a fundraiser known as LARC Fest on the first Saturday of April for the past three years. They have a radio market using part of that big building at the Boulder Fairgrounds. Three years ago, Sandra and Betty decided to put a craft show on the unused side of the building. Now they take up the whole space and the proceeds go to LARC.
“Then, our customers would say, 'Where locally can we buy your stuff?' Well, we didn’t have a store. We didn’t have anything like that. You could come to the house and open up a box and you could look through it,” Betty said. “So then, Sandra started working here at the Hidden Treasure, what the store was before we bought it. She worked here for 2-3 months.”
The owner of the first Hidden Treasure told Sandra that she wanted to sell the store because she was by herself, that it was not a job that can be done with one person, and asked if she knew anybody who wanted to buy the business.
“We told her 48 hours later that we wanted to purchase it. At that time, we were going to New York for my daughter’s wedding. That was May of 2017. We signed the pre-contract, went to New York, came back. We came back on June 18, signed the papers on the 19th, and opened the store on the 20th,” Sandra said. “We just put a 2 at the end because we wanted to keep the name, but we didn’t buy the name, we just bought the contents of the business. So, we just put a 2 at the end.”
Roughly 50 consignors followed them from The Hidden Treasure to The Hidden Treasure 2. The brand-new owners decided they had enough of a following that they would open and see how many more consignors they could attract. In 16 months, they had grown to over 200 consignors, with some consigning handmade goods, some consigning arts and crafts supplies, some both, and some just supplies.
“We have the gentlemen who lose their wives and have their wives stash and they don’t know what to do with it. They have already tried to sell it at a garage sale or what-have-you. They don’t want to throw it away,” Sandra said. “They hear through the grapevine that we take that stuff. I approach them and say, ‘Hey we have a store, we’ll take care of everything for you, we price it, we sell it, we tax it and you get a percentage of what you bring in.’ And they have made very good money.”
The Hidden Treasure 2 also recently expanded. Using an arch to bridge into a second space within the same building, the store now has tripled their store size, going from a space that would accommodate 8-10 people to a size that will now accommodate 20-25 people. When they had just the one smaller space, it got really crowded around the crafting table, but now the new space has alleviated that issue and customers can shop while the crafting room is hopping.
“My husband does all the advertising, promotion on social media and we have gone from maybe 1000 followers on Facebook, and now we just hit 2,750 this week. Every day we get at least 3-4 people who have never been in here. A lot of it is word of mouth and a lot is Facebook and other social media,” Sandra said.
The Money Store next door is going out of business in November. The owner of the building suggested they open a Christmas Bazaar for the month of December, so they will have 30 additional consigners the whole month long from December 1 until the 31st. They will be closed on Sundays and Christmas Day, but open the same hours as Hidden Treasure 2.
As they grow, they are now in the position to give back, both to their local community and other places around the world. The store was given two sewing machines, which they then donated to a church group that makes blankets and quilts for families in need. They have also donated fabric to groups who make dresses for women in Africa and have donated yarn to churches who make hats for the homeless. They give teachers 10% off if they are buying supplies for their classrooms.
“One of the challenges is that in the 16 months that we have had the business, the first 6 months we took in everything. And now we are getting a little more picky,” Aldrich said. “We will only accept things Monday-Friday, you can only bring it in clean, it can’t smell. That is something that we have conquered. One of the challenges that we had was to learn to say no.”
The Hidden Treasure 2 started offering craft-related classes back in September 2017. Some classes are taught by outside teachers and sometimes they conduct the classes themselves. Class offerings range from knitting, crocheting, sewing, quilting, chain-mail, quilling, jewelry, and so on. They also have an open studio on Fridays from 10 a.m to 7 p.m. and any crafter can come in for $5 and bring in their own project to work on. Look here for classes and schedules.
“It’s the community that supports us. People will say, ‘I come here first, I need a zipper and I came in here first to see if you have it,’ or ‘I need to match my color of yarn. I wanted to see what you had before I go somewhere else,’” Aldrich said. “People knew what The Hidden Treasure was, but now they come in and they say, “What is the Hidden Treasure?’ Then they look around and they find something and say, ‘This is my treasure that I’ve found.’”
