BILLINGS - Liberty & Vine Country Store in Downtown Billings announced Monday it would be closing its doors.
Store owners Amy and Jason Pawlowski made the announcement on the store's Facebook page, explaining that Jason Pawlowski was retiring from his "real" job and the couple was now looking forward to spending more time with each other and family.
The store, located at 2019 Montana Ave., was closed Monday but will open Tuesday and a "liquidation sale" will begin in March. An exact closing date was not provided.
The country mercantile store opened in a renovated warehouse in 2018.
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Here's the couple's full statement:
It happened something like this.
We had just sold our previous business and the plan was for me to retire. I was at home all of three weeks before I uttered to my husband, “I want to start another business.” That one sentence turned into a who-can yell-louder-screaming match. I pulled out the super power only females possess—the Ugly Woman Cry, and soon after, Liberty & Vine was born.
To suggest to you that business was slow to start would be a gross understatement. There were days we’d go hours without seeing a customer. I began to wonder if I wrangled a 38,000 square foot judgment error--a major millions booboo. After all, it’s a little tricky to pay the bank back those big notes when there’s no money hitting the cash registers and you’ve already went all in on a major construction project. Jason was beyond worried but was husband enough not to say it to my face. I was wife enough to know he didn’t have to. Our marriage had survived some rocky times but those startup L&V days were the toughest. It was Jason’s loyalty though that propelled us forward. He never once stopped believing or questioned me about such an slow startup, even when I knew he could see he was on severely shaky ground. I give that guy a lot of grief, but that right there? That’s my guy.
I quickly learned our part of downtown wasn’t like the west end--which I had been so accustomed to at my previous business. There were no traffic patterns here. Some days we’d do ten times the business that we did the day prior. The very next week, it was as if we got stuck in a bingo tumbler and the pieces just landed wherever again. The first Christmas season came and we very slowly started gaining some traction. I was starting to get it! We learned what worked and what didn’t and maneuvered. Boy Howdy, did we maneuver in 2020!
By 2021, we had broken every record that we made in any business we ever managed or owned and then some. 2022, 2023. Same. Downtown Billings and the EBurd is a place you can definitely do business. (FYI, Please pay no mind to those morning radio show guys, at least when it comes to not doing business downtown.)
I want you to know how much I love retail and (almost) everything that comes with it. I believe in brick and mortar and its big black dot on the map of commerce. There will always be a need for touching, feeling, tasting, and smelling to shop. It’s an experience you will not ever get online. Brick and mortar creates memories—memories that you can’t get online from the likes of Amazon while shopping with your girlfriends.
Scenario:
“Hey! Do you want to get together at my place and scroll the online candle ads together? We’ll take turns sitting in front of my Dell and we'll pretend that we can smell the scents coming through the monitor!”
“OMG, Becky, That sounds like so much fun! I seriously can’t even wait!!!”
Nope, not going to happen. That’s one of the things I have loved about Liberty & Vine and I hope you have loved it too. There are a lot of great memories here. That’s because of you showing up with your friends and your family to shop, laugh and have some fun inside these brick walls.
Yes. Our time here is nearing an end. Not yet. But soon.
It’s time for me to tell you that my husband Jason has made the decision to retire from his job this year—his “real” job as I’ve called it all these years. If you didn’t know, that’s the job that made it possible for me to do what I have loved all these years. But we’ve also both worked seven days a week for the entirety of our careers as well as our marriage, missing out on so many of life’s events, celebrations and hardships together as a family. If there’s a celebration, one of us has been able to sometimes break away, but never both of us. If there was a family event on a weekend, we’ve always declined with a “Sorry, we have to work at the store.” I don’t even know how many invites, appointments, family trips, reservations, funerals, even a few plane tickets we’ve tossed over the years due to having to make a last-minute change in plans. (Other small business owners know what I speak of here) That’s the life of a retail business owner. That’s having an “Open/Closed” sign with posted hours. It’s been that way for our entire marriage, for our son too--our small family. Work has always been the tippy-top of the priority list. There are other things Jason and I want to do now.
This time there won’t be any ugly crying afterward. Except when we’re fishing and Jason’s upset because my catch is so much larger. (It’s okay, Jason. I’ll still let you take it off the hook for me.)
Thank you for supporting Liberty & Vine and making it a successful small business. We truly have the most gracious customers in Billings. I never stopped admiring you, especially during those long lines that snaked through the store at Christmas time and how patient all of you were! You all are the coolest people, some of you I’ve never even met but I still know just cool you are. It’s written all over those smiling faces! You always outnumbered that one bad experience by the hundreds of great experiences.
Thank you to our consignors, a few who have been with us since our opening day and chose to hang in there those first tough startup months! Thank you for operating your booths like your own small business and for understanding just what it takes to pay the bills, the employees, the overhead! Thank you to our vendors/wholesalers, who understood that we couldn’t make sales without your product being here timely and in quality condition. You get it. Without you, we wouldn’t have ever succeeded.
To our staff. We’ve worked as a small team for so long, haven't we? Thank you—you are the ones who have held us together—you are the glue of this place and the face of this store. Thank you for your understanding last night. You all have your own styles, your own quips (weirdos), and such strong, beautiful, okay scratch that-seriously kick-ass personalities. You all have been self-motivated and dedicated to your jobs and customers. Any employer in Billings is going to be unbelievably fortunate to have you if you decide to move on to another place. I have shared more with you than I probably should have as your employer—it’s a fine line to walk when we work together every day. I should have exhibited more restraint at times. Just an FYI, I’m probably not going to start now, so I’ll apologize in advance.
To our past staff, some of you I employed when you were kids yourselves and now you have children of your own. I don’t know if I can even convey in words what that means to Jason and me. There’s a couple of you that I wish I could go back and ask for a re-do. Egh, life. Then, a few of you still come in from our previous business, hugs and wheat pennies in hand—not forgotten. All of you have given me stories to tell for years to come-- some funny, some sad, some sentimental, and some absolutely ridiculous. As my friend Anna jokes, “You can’t make this sh*t up”. No, you certainly can’t. And, I don’t think I’d ever want to.
The good news is we are not closing yet! You still have plenty of time to shop. Also, we do have the store for sale in hopes of keeping it OPEN but it is very short term and we do have a considerable amount of inventory. If the store does not sell in short order, we will most likely be closing our doors late April or early May, depending on our inventory supply.
Due to this, we are asking you to:
If you have gift cards, PLEASE come in and REDEEM them as soon as you can. The store is stocked and our consignors are all still here for the time being. We have worked on replenishing the store since Christmas so you still have plenty of choices.
We will no longer be stocking the store so the earlier you come in, the better the selection will be..
We are still closed on Mondays. When we open on Tuesday, January 30th, most everything in the store that will be sold should have a price on it—at least Jason and I are working hard to get that done as much as possible! That means that most fixtures, most of our antique furniture displays, and all of Jason’s collector vintage signs, and most displays will have a price. Most fixtures and displays will not be able to removed until the end of April or until the inventory sells off of them, whichever is first. There are some personal items that won’t be priced (NFS tag) because they were either ours when we moved in or inherited nostalgia pieces that we will be taking home with us.
Reward customers will still earn points THROUGH FEBRUARY.
Rewards will stop earning in March. You can still use any accumulated points through the liquidation but you will not earn points during the liquidation.
We will no longer be SELLING gift cards starting immediately but you can redeem them through the end of our liquidation.
The liquidation sale will begin in March. Nothing will be on sale until March. We are operating as usual until then with the exception of selling gift cards and no layaway.
If you have purchased items in storage in the basement, please call Jason or Amy to make arrangements well in advance to remove them. We do require notice due to staffing. Any previously purchased, stored items should be removed prior to April 30th. We will no longer be storing items that can be taken with at time of purchase.
It has been our true pleasure in serving you all these years. Thank you for being such fabulous customers, people, and friends.
With sincere gratitude,
Amy and Jason Pawlowski
