Welcome Home gift shop closing
Welcome Home Friends Gift Shop recently announced it will close its doors.
Owner Lynn Mallicoat opened the store four years ago in April and sent out a letter to some 100 of her most faithful customers that the store will have its last sale March 8 and 9.
After that, depending on business, she may stay open through March 14, she said.
“I’ll play it by ear,” she said.
This was the first business Mallicoat owned and though she does not have any plans to reopen another business in the near future, she would not rule it out, either.
A resident of Solon, Mallicoat said she had a 50-mile round-trip each day the store was open, but said she will miss West Branch.
“The townspeople meant a great deal to me,” she said. “This is very, very hard for me.”
In her letter to customers, she said “thank you! … not good-bye!”
“If I were to thank each and every one of you for your support, encouragement and your friendship” she writes, “I would have to take out a two-page ad!”
She said that through owning the business, she “lived one of my dreams.”
