LaDifférence, the contemporary home-furnishing retailer that's made its home in downtown Richmond for more than a decade, is closing its Henrico County store after a year.
"We were gauging the market to see whether there really was a large group of people who were not coming to us because they didn't come downtown. It turns out that wasn't the case," said Andy Thornton, who owns the store with his wife, Sarah Paxton.
The retailer, which operates its flagship location in Shockoe Bottom, opened the store in the West Broad Village retail and residential development last February as an experiment to see if it could reach a broader customer base.
Thornton said they found that customers preferred to drive the 12 miles to downtown for "the full experience" of the 50,000-square-foot store at 14th and Dock streets.
Closing the 7,000-square foot Henrico store allows Thornton and Paxton to focus all their energy on the downtown location, he said.
"We actually were making money there, but it was an unnecessary distraction," he said.
And, he added, "we're more of an urban retailer."
LaDifférence will hold a liquidation sale from mid-January into February. The store will close by the end of February.
The downtown store near the Canal Walk opened in 1998, but the company got its start in Charlottesville in 1980. It moved to Richmond in 1992.
LaDifférence has a strong national reputation, particularly on the East Coast.
Losing LaDifférence is the first big setback for West Broad Village in a couple of years.
West Broad Village, which has homes, apartments, offices and retail space, was besieged with problems in its early stages of development in 2008.
But in late 2009, Markel/Eagle Partners LLC took over the development from the original developer. Since Markel/Eagle took over, several new retailers and restaurants have moved in or are under construction.
Thornton said the large number of restaurants didn't bring in a steady stream of shoppers to his store.
"We hoped for more traffic at West Broad than we received, but most of the commercial spaces there are leaning toward restaurants, which draw more of a nighttime crowd than retail shoppers," he said.
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