Things are grinding to a halt for a longtime gift and antique shop in Overland Park.
This week, customers made a point to stop by Unique Finds for their last chance to reserve goods they’d been eyeing — carrying antique furniture and art out the door with them for the last time. Everything must go.
Seeing those items go marks the end of an era; bittersweet, but an ending that owner Bob Southard said he’s ready for.
After roughly 20 years, the shop will close its doors in downtown Overland Park next week.
Unique Finds operated at 8025 Santa Fe Drive
- The shop occupied a space just off 80th Street and Santa Fe Drive in downtown Overland Park.
- Unique Finds moved around downtown Overland Park over the years, occupying three other spaces before moving into its current one six years ago.
- The shop is near Mediterranean eatery Hummus and Pita and Thompson Park.
Unique Finds offered “gifts with a mission”
As an American Baptist youth minister, Southard spent multiple decades taking kids on mission trips to other countries. To this day, he’s gone on roughly 30 of those trips.
During those trips, he’d collect local artisan goods from the places he visited. At the end of one trip to Haiti, he had an idea — why not bring some of those goods back home to sell, and send the profits back to the people who’d gifted them to him?
“I took what I could carry, and then they sent me some more,” Southard said. “Then other missionaries heard about (what I was doing) and they sent me some, and pretty soon I was in business.”
Unique Finds first operated out of Southard’s Overland Park home for eight years, continuing to grow. When items began to fall out of his cart while he was selling at Baptist conventions, he knew it was time to find a new way to sell what he had.
“I said that I either needed to open a store, or I needed to get out of this,” he recalled, laughing.
The shop offered items from 75 local artisans, as well as missionaries from across the world. Unique Finds also purchased goods from fair trade companies to support people in poverty.
“I especially tried to help people in poverty, missionaries, and churches that were helping missionaries,” Southard said. “I felt like I was helping people get their products to market that would never get them into Walmart.”
Unique Finds will close next week
Though the store’s official last day is Monday, Southard said customers are welcome to continue to stop by and see what they can grab in the following days, while he and his staff continue to clear out the space.
Beyond the closure of the store, Southard’s next chapter will include more time with his wife, Dianne Shumaker, who is in post-acute care. Helping care for her, he said, is his next calling.
Ultimately, Southard said the message behind Unique Finds was simple: the way you spend your money can be a ministry in itself.
“I love helping people, and it’s pretty clear to me that it’s helped at a lot of levels,” he said. “Missions, people in poverty, staff development, helping artisans find and develop their business.”
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