Every day is a holiday at a cozy souvenir shop that has just opened its doors in Martinez.
“I just love Christmas and holidays,” said Tiffani Landers, owner of Tiffani’s Tinsel Town Gift Shop, which had its grand opening Saturday morning.
Landers’ enthusiasm for yuletide décor is what inspired her to launch a business specializing in seasonally themed collectibles.
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“I want to have an emphasis on Christmas, but also other holidays,” she said. “We have other holiday items and do gift wrapping. It seems like you can’t really find that anymore.”
A real estate agent with Southeastern Residential, Landers applied her experience with designing model homes to coordinating the store’s inventory. In doing so she has kept an eye on home décor trends in the months leading up to the opening. For the holiday-themed pieces, however, Landers notes one central factor in curating the catalog.
“As far as the seasonal items, it’s just really stuff that I think is adorable,” she said. “That’s just really how I’ve chosen things.”
The store has a display section for Easter, with several rabbit dolls, figurines and garden statues. There’s a sizable baby shower gift section, an area devoted to Thanksgiving, another for spring and summer decorations. One corner of the store has a display merging Christmas and Valentine’s Day, with a Christmas tree holding hearts, and elf and gnome dolls dressed in pink.
“I just I love the gnomes,” said Landers. “Those are my favorite. And these large Easter bunnies, the wooden ones, I’ve never ever seen before in any store.”
Landers started the process of building the business right after Thanksgiving, signing the lease for its Davis Road location in December 2021. After that she renovated the whole space, repainting, reflooring and even upgrading the bathroom. Finding that location, she says, was the hard part.
“It’s just trying to find out the right spot where you think you’re going to be busy and get traffic,” said Landers. “That was a hard decision. I’d looked at some places on Washington Road. But this really just suited what I want to do for right now.”
Landers sees plenty ahead for the shop, including offering both stocked and personalized gifts baskets and even expanding to a wider space, or adding a second location, so that she can lean more into the year-round Christmas theme. In the meantime, she has enjoyed the journey of launching Tinsel Town.
“We did do a lot of work,” said Landers. “But it’s been fun really just buying everything, that’s pretty exciting for me. It’s like a woman’s dream.”
Tiffani’s Tinsel Town Gift Shop is located at 123 Davis Rd., Unit B, in Martinez. For more information, visit its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TiffanisTinselTown.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering education in Columbia County and business-related topics for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com
