When the Painted Tree Boutiques closed all of its locations, several local makers were suddenly left in the lurch. Tyler and Lindsey Bonine were some of them.
The husband-and-wife duo owns custom hat and apparel brand Patch Hats and home decor brand Board and Block Co. Before all of the closures, customers could find goods from those brands in eight different Painted Tree locations.
“That was a pretty substantial hit for us,” Tyler recounted. “There’s really a void (now) for something like this in Johnson County that has more than like 23, 24, 25 vendors.”
Not for long, though. Later this year, the couple will soon open a new vendor marketplace of their own, 913 Mercantile, in Mission.
913 Mercantile is coming to 5330 Martway St.
- The new concept is coming to a space at Mission Mart just off Nall Avenue and Johnson Drive, near The Peanut and Dollar General.
- Antique and consignment mall A Fabulous Find previously occupied the space.
- Though regular hours are still being finalized, 913 Mercantile will likely be open five days a week, Wednesday through Sunday.
913 Mercantile will offer a Kansas City-made goods
The new marketplace will have space for 70 vendors and small businesses, offering a wide variety of goods.
Though he’s hesitant to share names of vendors yet, Bonine said customers can expect items like men’s and women’s clothing, home decor, and bath and body products.
One thing is for sure: the Bonines want 913 Mercantile to have a strong focus on local identity and local pride.
“Kansas City pride is like no other pride throughout the country,” he said. “I say that wholeheartedly. We’ve lived all over, and people that are in Kansas City are proud to be in Kansas City.”
As for the space itself, Bonine said the goal is to give each vendor their own curated storefront — one that feels like just theirs.
“It’s basically like walking into a storefront that has 70 other little storefronts there,” he said. ““Everybody will be able to design it how they want — they can paint the walls if they want, they can hang lights, their signage, their decorations. We really want vendors to be able to customize it however they want.”
The 913 Mercantile model could grow in the future
Though the Bonine family lives in Olathe, Mission felt like an appealing location due, in part, to its centrality in the metro area.
“Mission is just such a vibrant area,” Bonine said. “The Johnson Drive stretch, there’s so many fun businesses there. And it’s close to the state line, which was really intriguing to us to really feel like we’re serving the entire community of both sides of Kansas City, not just the Kansas side or the Missouri side.”
Beyond this first space, Bonine said expanding the concept isn’t out of the question. If they did so, he said, they’d give each space its own distinct identity based on its location. (For example, a market on the Missouri side of Kansas City could be 816 Mercantile.)
For now, though, Tyler and Lindsey are focused squarely on turning their “blank slate” of a Mission space into not just a business, but an asset for local makers and residents.
“We really want to be focused on the community,” he said. “Obviously we’re doing it to be in business, but we’re doing it for the community too, and I think that’s the most exciting thing.”
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