Photo by Erin Nelson.
The Shades Mountain Mercantile store in Bluff Park’s Shades Mountain Plaza has hundreds of antiques and vintage items for sale.
Longtime reseller Chris Feagin, owner of Hoover Antique Gallery and Urban Suburban Antiques in Crestwood, opened his third antique mall, Shades Mountain Mercantile, in Piggly Wiggly’s old space at 770 Shades Mountain Plaza in April of this year.
Shades Mountain Mercantile is an antique mall that’s “a little more vintage and upscale” and has antique items such as furniture and household accessories.
“We have a lot of vendors under one roof, each one with a unique type of personality in their merchandising,” Feagin said. “It all centers back to the idea of recycling, repurposing and reusing vintage items and that type of thing.”
Feagin said he was approached with the idea of a third store by the property owner of Hoover Antique Gallery, who also owned the old Piggly Wiggly space.
He said he was pleased with the performance of Hoover Antique and thought putting an antique mall in the former grocery store would be a successful replacement.
“Nobody’s really beating on anybody’s door to put anything in an old grocery store,” Feagin said.
When he got the offer, he said, he had just bought a house near Noccalula Falls during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said he knew it would be a challenge for him because it would add another commute to his weekly schedule.
“The opportunity came along, and I’m not getting any younger; I just turned 50,” Feagin said. “I just thought, ‘Maybe I won’t have the opportunity to do this again. I really wasn’t planning on doing this, but it’s a challenge. Let’s see what we can do with this.’”
He said the old grocery store is a little larger than he would’ve chosen for a location that has a “‘neighborhood-sy’ type feel.”
Feagin said there’s a higher demand for merchandise at Shades Mountain Mercantile than his other stores, which required him to fill the location with new items faster than he’s ever had to before.
Each of his stores has its own personality, as do each of the vendors and the items they sell, he said.
It’s fun to find which items sell the best in each of his stores, he said.
“We just have to feel our way through and find what that neighborhood reacts to and what they like,” Feagin said. “They’re liking vintage and a mixture of mid-century type items.”
Feagin said the new antique mall has received a lot of positive feedback and community support.
“The feedback’s been really good,” he said. “People that live around the store will come in and say, ‘Thank you for doing this,’ and that’s a reward in and of itself because they knew that building could’ve been sitting empty for a long time and that’s an eyesore. That doesn’t provide anything for the community at all.”
He said he also has friends near Hoover that appreciate him filling up the space.
Feagin said he’s been reselling vintage and antique items since he was 15 years old. He got into it through his parents, who did it as a hobby, he said.
“I got into it just out of entrepreneurial spirit as a teenager,” Feagin said. “I took my grass-cutting money, and I thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to go to estate sales, yard sales and auctions with my parents and take a little bit of my grass-cutting money and see if I can buy something.’ ... I’ve grown this out of cutting grass 35 years ago.”
