True Aiken reopens in new location after electrical fire
AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - On Thursday, True Aiken reopened its doors after nearly a three-month hiatus.
Its new location is on 146 Lauren’s Street.
This comes after True Aiken and several other businesses had to shut down their operations after an electrical fire on Hayne Avenue.
True Aiken Owner, Sarah Dodge, says it was important to her to continue to offer a spot downtown that encapsulated Aiken’s identity.
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“I personally felt like there was a need for it,” said Dodge. “We had visited Aiken five years ago and in our visit, we were really looking for a store that had a lot of Aiken stuff.”
Dodge says at the time she was unable to find that spot, so she took it upon herself to bring her own designs for the community to enjoy.
She was only open for 10 weeks before the fire put a halt on her operations. She says it was unexpected and she contemplated for weeks on where to go next.
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“I kind of thought about it and thought no, but we had such a good response and such a positive outpouring from the community of people really ing us,” said Dodge.
She’s always wanted to operate in a bigger space that naturally had more foot traffic. She says it took looking at the bright side of the situation to push forward.
“We just ended up turning a negative into a positive and just say, ‘Let’s go for it, let’s find a bigger space on Lauren’s’. We came and looked at this place, the old Cindi’s Sweet Shoppe, and realized this is where we wanted to be,” said Dodge.
To celebrate the opening day the store extended their hours to 8 p.m. on Thursday.
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