Moxie owner announces store closing plans

DeKALB – Megan Morrison wants her downtown DeKalb business, Moxie, to go out with a bang.

Morrison announced she will close Moxie, a store that has drawn customers 230 E. Lincoln Highway for nearly 10 years, in Spring 2015. But business won't dwindle over the next few months, she said. New items will continue to flow into the store through the holidays and customers can still expect the usual holiday parties and shopping events.

“It was just the right timing,” Morrison said. “I always knew I wouldn't do this forever.”

She decided 2015 would be the year to close the eclectic shop filled with new and vintage gifts, jewelry, clothes and home decor about five years ago after merging it with her other downtown business, Megan Morrison Home and Garden.

Announcing the looming closure Thursday via Facebook and a customer email blast was a way to let customers know this would be the last Moxie Christmas, Morrison said.

Morrison and her sister, manager Courtney Wilson, opened Moxie in 2005, about five years after the home and garden store. They said running a bustling retail business has kept them from spending time with family, traveling and exploring other passions.

“Business has been great,” Wilson said. “Our customers have been awesome. That's going to be the hard part.”

The news of Moxie closing saddened Linda Matuszewski, of DeKalb, who picked up a few gifts for a friend's 50th birthday Friday morning. She's shopped Moxie a handful of times a year for the past nine years, she said, always bringing out-of-town friends to the store.

“To me, it's a one-of-a-kind place,” Matuszewski said.

Shoppers can expect a closing sale around February. By next spring, Morrison plans to have sold most of the inventory, including displays.

But Morrison's not open to selling the business. It's an extension of her personality, she said, which means selling the business to someone else would change Moxie entirely.

“I can't possibly sell it,” Morrison said. “Moxie is me. I bought every item in the store.”

She will decide whether to rent or sell the 10,000-square-foot building next spring when she has a better idea of the real estate climate. If the former Megan Morrison store across the street, which has been for sale since 2011, is not sold by next spring, she said she will rent it.

“We will not be putting empty buildings around downtown,” Morrison said.

Matt Duffy, executive director of the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce, said he hopes a new business will fill the large store in the center of downtown. He doesn't have concerns that other downtown businesses will suffer, though he knows a new business might not have Moxie's following.

“I think it's a guessing game,” Duffy said about what impact Moxie closing will have. “They've been a staple downtown.”

The impact Moxie has on other downtown DeKalb businesses is clear to Fran Montez, who owns Decades, a consignment shop at 235 E. Lincoln Highway. She called the store – fueled by Morrison's following – an anchor for downtown.

“When they would have their parties, I would go in and joke with them,” Montez said. “I would say, 'You paid my electric bill. You just paid my gas bill.'”