A seasonal holiday gift store that transformed into a year-round furniture consignment store, Divine Consign in downtown Vancouver will close Aug. 31 after almost 20 years in business.
Divine Consign’s inbox was flooded with responses to a Tuesday email blast letting community members know about the impending closure.
Linda Glover, Divine Consign’s executive director, said it’s nice to be told the store made a difference in someone’s life and to have people reflect back on their experience.
Glover and a group of volunteers have run the furniture store six days a week for almost two decades.
“I think we were in denial for a long time,” said store volunteer Bobbi Sorenson. “When you’re working this type of business, you kind of know when the slowdown happens and then when it picks up. So we just kept waiting for it to pick up, and it just never did.”
In 1997, a group of nonprofits came together and started a pop-up holiday shop. Volunteers sold merchandise to cover their costs and split the proceeds among nonprofits. The store shifted to year-round shop Divine Consign in 2005.
“It was really hard to compete in the Christmas world because we would go to market and buy Christmas merchandise, come back and try to sell it,” Glover said. “But Target and Freddie’s (Fred Meyer) were selling it for less than we could sell it for.”
Divine Consign has three departments in its 10,000-square-foot, two-story building at 904 Main St. The showroom offers furniture, art, home decor and rugs on the main level. On the lower level, B.Divine Clothing has an assortment of donated name brands, designer clothing and accessories for women. And Divine Vintage sells a mix of midcentury furniture, barware and mirrors.
Through the years, the store had a few additions, including an upholstery business and a pop-up cupcake store. Volunteers worked with Partners in Careers to give people job training and work experience.
“We’re just a group of grandmas. So when we have young people come in that are struggling, we just love the fact that we can support them and help build their confidence,” Glover said.
The store survived the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, but with furniture sales decreasing in the last year, Glover said it was a good time to close the doors.
One of Divine Consign’s longtime vendors and volunteers considered taking over the store and making it into a for-profit business but decided against it.
“There’s the emotional part of it — to step away from all this,” Glover said. “We’re all so connected and been so devoted that that’s a hard thing to do. But transitions and changes happen in life, and that’s healthy, too.”
Gifts For Our Community, the nonprofit giving arm of the endeavor, will also be dissolved.
Since 1997, Gifts For Our Community has given more than $2 million to more than 200 nonprofits in arts, education and human services.
“Nonprofits are very talented,” Glover said. “They have excellent, critical services that the community needs — but they always need more money.”
After the store closes, Main Street will have two deserted consignment storefronts. Spanky’s Legendary Consignment closed its downtown location at 812 Main St. in 2007, and the building has remained empty. (The Spanky’s sign is still on the building.)
The remaining inventory at Divine Consign will be donated Aug. 27, and doors will close Aug. 31.
“You really miss that connection with people,” Sorenson said. “And I got that here. It’s just rewarding in so many ways and knowing that by volunteering, we were giving back to the community.”
A celebration of Divine Consign will be at 11 a.m. Aug. 2 at Divine Consign in downtown Vancouver.
