Things We Love: The First 10 Years of EuroLux Antiques

It's been fun to look back over the past ten years of EuroLux Antiques as we celebrate our 10th anniversary and remember how far we've come. So much has changed - even our name and our location!

We actually started our business as EuroLux Imports - meant to convey that we were importing hand-selected, high-quality luxury goods from Europe. Our logo was a rampant lion with our name in script lettering. The lettering was so fancy you could hardly read it.

We soon found out that most folks understood the word "imports" as synonymous with "reproductions."  We had a serious credibility problem with folks not believing that our pieces were true antiques. So we changed our name to EuroLux Antiques and that seemed to solve the problem. (Now we're actually considering changing our name to EuroLux Home, to reflect the fact that we have started to sell much more than just antiques!)

We also originally opened our business outside of Newberry on CR Koon Highway in a large metal pole building. Here is a glimpse of the outside and the inside of our original building.

I still remember the day our sign went up, I was so excited! It finally felt real - we really had our own business!

After a year and a half, we decided to move to Historic Downtown Newberry and we purchased our current gallery, a two story building at 1409 Main Street. All of the other antiques shops in Newberry were concentrated on Main Street, so we increased our walk-in traffic. And Downtown Newberry is so cool, we love being part of the neighborhood!

Also, the new gallery was much more convenient for receiving containers of European antiques. In our old space, we had to move everything to the walls so that we could unload directly into the middle of the room. Then the shop was a disaster for a week or more while we sorted everything out. Now we just unload directly into the basement level so that we don't mess up the gallery!

We also enjoyed moving to Downtown Newberry as we joined a thriving community of other small business owners.

I was honored to serve as President of the Downtown Merchants Association for three years and Greg served as Treasurer too.

There is quite a bit happening in Downtown Newberry these days, but I'll tell you about that another time. For now, we're just happy to look back over our first ten years and share our journey with you. Thanks to all our customers who bought antiques from us, and who made it all such fun!