Tina and Ross Hopkins are not only married, but have been business partners for the past 15 years. In the past they have been known for restaurants and donut shops in the area but their latest venture now is an antique mall. 

Officially known as Mimi’s Antique Attic, named for the nickname given to Tina by her grandchildren, the business opened May 1 to prospective vendors and is now completely stocked and open for business. 

Instead of searching for their own products, the Hopkins’ have elected to sell space in their store to over 100 vendors who can then stock their own booths and sell their own products. The Hopkins charge rent and take a 10% commission of all sales while the individual vendors keep the rest. 

“We have quilters that do handmade quilts, and we have people that handle mostly antiques, … I just leased a booth yesterday to a fellow that does sports cards, collects them and sells them,” Ross said. 

The vendors are completely responsible for their booths and the goods they sell, leading to an impressive variety across the store’s retail space. Walking through the store, shoppers can find everything from antique tools to sports memorabilia to homemade woodworking projects. 

The booths range in both size and price with the largest, 10 by 12 feet, available for $200 a month, and the smallest, four by two feet, for only $40 per month along with several others in between. 

One of their most successful vendors operates 14 booths throughout the store including one selling charms for Crocs that can be placed on the shoes. 

As of right now, every booth in the store is currently occupied, although the Hopkins’ are considering expansion. Ross said that, depending on how the business performs through the year they have had conversations with their landlord about potentially renting the retail space directly to the east of their store as well to offer more space for vendors. 

“We’ve only done it for three months, but I will tell you, I’m fairly pleased with the success so far, being completely full,” Ross said. “Our job is to get people in the store, our job is to bring shoppers in to advertise and do what we need to do to bring people in the store so the vendors can sell their products.”

They also touted the layout of their store as a positive for customers, with wide aisles and plenty of space between booths they wanted to create a store experience that was easy for customers to enjoy. 

While they do offer a wide variety of items from their vendors for customers to peruse, there are some they want to avoid. 

Ross said they had tried to avoid what he referred to as “garage sale stuff” or “junk,” he also specified that they did not want anything gas-powered, like lawn mowers if they could avoid them. 

More than anything, the Hopkins’ were happy to be out of the restaurant business, where they said as they aged the work was becoming too much to bear. Ross continued saying while he would consider retirement as he turns 65 next year, the antique attic is a business he could see them running for years to come. 

“It’s in God’s timing not ours, I mean, it just all rolled like butter,” Tina said.