Rachel Sheets
Special to The Sun
EDMOND —
Carolyn and Gary Goldman of Edmond put together their love for personal customer service and many years of retail and restaurant experience to form a uniquely designed, high-end children’s clothing store.
Located at 5840 N. Classen Blvd. in the latest, modern shopping center Classen Curve, Uptown Kids provides a fun shopping experience for both kids and parents.
“The experience starts the second the patron walks in the door with our initial warm greets, offering them a beverage and giving them a tour of the store,” said Gary, who is the general manager at Charleston’s Restaurant in Edmond.
Kids can play or watch a movie in a large, see-through yellow box located on one end of the store while the parents shop.
“It makes the shopper comfortable, because they can put their kids in there to play and be at ease while they shop,” Gary said.
Carolyn, who has been in retail since she was 16 years old and earned a degree in fashion marketing at the University of Central Oklahoma, has dreamed of opening her own children’s clothing store for years.
“It’s not like I’m coming in here going to work, because I love it,” she said. “It’s my passion.”
The Goldmans have been planning and researching children’s boutiques across the country for the past year to bring a contemporary and different kind of shopping experience to Oklahoma families.
“I wanted it to be clean,” Carolyn said. “Basically, I wanted it to be like an art gallery for clothing, because you go into so many stores where the clothes are so compacted in there that you can’t see anything.”
Elliott and Associates Architects, who also designed Chesapeake Energy Corporation and the Classen Curve shopping center, worked with the Goldmans to design a modern layout for the store that coincided with their vision and the rest of Classen Curve.
The store, which officially opened Aug. 2, sells clothing, accessories, strollers, high chairs, cribs and artwork by basketball player Desmond Mason. Unique lines include European clothing line Elaine et Lena, Spanish clothing line Desiqual, Boom cribs and high chairs, and Bugaboo strollers, which cannot be found anywhere else in Oklahoma.
The store’s racks, floors and walls are laid out on a grid and are able to move, allowing room for concerts, events and fashion shows.
Uptown Kids goes far beyond the clothing, bringing monthly events for children and families including story time in the “yellow box” every Saturday at 10:30 a.m., private shopping experiences for parents, Mom speaker series, a holiday fashion show in December, and concerts by the Sugar Free Allstars and Spaghetti Eddie.
Next month, Uptown Kids will host a Halloween Monster Ball where they will give out candy and provide a safe, carnival-type environment for children to celebrate the holiday.
“We want it to be a place where kids can come,” Carolyn said. “It’s something fun for them to do and get the families involved.”
The Goldmans already see potential for growth in the future, because of the positive response they have received from hundreds of customers the past few months. Carolyn hopes to open more Uptown Kids in more states to share the fun experience with other shoppers outside of Oklahoma.
“For now, my goal is to have returning customers just because of the customer service we provide,” Carolyn said. “We want to bring back that personal experience by knowing the customer.”
