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Today we’d like to introduce you to Malene Davis.
Hi Malene, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
In 2010, the beehive began as a new vision of its predecessor, Beehive Co-op, which existed in Buckhead for 4 years as a high-end gallery/boutique. The original co-op had under 40 designers and high price points to cater to people in the Buckhead area. I (Malene) began as a designer there in 2008 selling a line of gemstone and wood beaded jewelry, which was very successful in the store. When the store came under financial duress in 2009, I jumped at the opportunity to purchase the assets from the store to begin my own beehive concept, completely reimagined to cater to a much broader shopping audience. We wanted to make handmade giftable, accessible, and affordable for all.
I opened our location in the Edgewood Retail District in April 2010 to a bustling customer base hungry for handmade in the area. Being centrally located near Little Five Points, East Atlanta Village, Virginia Highland, Inman Park, Reynoldstown and Grant Park gave us a demographically perfect customer base with a great cultural, age, and income mix. This customer helped us to quickly grow, as we made sure our vendor and product mix suited potential customers of all ages and incomes. Within our first year, we grew from 50 designers to over 100 and maintained that quantity of local and regional designers through 2020, when the pandemic hit and forced to dramatically modify business to stay competitive.
The Beehive has been the leading handmade store in Atlanta since 2010, with our collective model frequently adopted by other stores and competitors. Since our opening in 2010, we have kept ahead of the market by being the first handmade store in Atlanta to deliver a full online shopping experience where each designer has an independent page to sell their wares, creating an entire shopping department in our brick-and-mortar called “Handbaked,” which is comprised of food goods created by local and regional food artists, and creating one of the most robust modern workshop programs in Atlanta, which is fortunately still thriving today. Making sure that we are active in our community and continuing to provide reasonably-priced goods for our consumers has kept us in business for almost 13 years.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As with all people who start a business, there have been many bumpy roads and huge learning curves that are faced as any new business attempts to survive day-to-day. We’ve had lessons with managing accounting, figuring out how to maintain costs in a non-traditional business model where the majority of the revenue (80%) is returned to the designers and vendors who sell in the store, tax issues (as an example, we had no idea what a filing frequency was in our first year of business for sales tax and had to play catch up), and managing to stay ahead of competition that directly copied our model, from attempts to sell products from the same vendors, to copying our contract and work product directly. In order to stay ahead of the pack, we’ve strived to not look back but only look forward to what comes next. This philosophy has served us well and allows us to continue to innovate in ways that suit our customer base and vendor community.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
While I now share the day-to-day responsibilities of owning the business with my partner in life and business, Silas, I believe what sets me apart from other handmade business owners is my professional background. I have a law degree and worked in the corporate office of a University prior to heading to Atlanta in 2007. I had one year to do whatever I wanted before sitting for the Georgia Bar and chose to make jewelry. In that year, I utilized my legal and business background to grow my personal jewelry business from a single location to over 60 locations nationwide. I pivoted the knowledge I had and began to – initially – casually advise designers on how they could bolster their business opportunities in a fledging retail market where handmade was just beginning to become mainstream. This mentoring and advisement to others was the baseline and genesis of the beehive community as it exists today.
Unlike other collectives in Atlanta, we keep store figures and sales open so that the vendors can see how they’re faring month-to-month, see how the store is doing, and look at the sales of other designers who sell in their category. While some may seem this as intimidating, viewing the health of the store and the sales of our counterparts provides us with a salient view on how one business is faring compared to another. Because the beehive fosters a forward-thinking, open and inclusive environment informationally, beehivers can go to each other and see what others are doing in their business to thrive. We all grow faster if we grow together, and this strategy is what separates us from just being any other handmade boutique.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Fostering an environment that is as inclusive as it possibly can be. Being in business for 13 years as a Black business owners, we have the opportunity to provide others with opportunities and possibilities that we have often been overlooked in receiving. Our community consists of people of all ages, religions, nationalities, and sexual orientations, and we are so proud of the diversity that we have helped to promote in the beehive designer. Inclusivity and openness is what has helped to remain in business through bumps, bruises and Covid-19, and I strongly believe that is what will help to keep us going.
Pricing:
- Bath & Body – $1 – $24
- Apparel – $30 – $120
- Baby Goods – $8 – $25
- Housewares – $3 – $45
- Jewelry – $6 – $65 (average)
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thebeehiveatl.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/thebeehiveatl
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/thebeehiveatl
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/thebeehiveatl
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/thebeehiveatl
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-beehive-atlanta?osq=the+beehive+atlanta
Image Credits
The Beehive