It was 1989 and Cinnamon Chaser was tired of chasing around town. She liked to buy gifts, and when she bought gifts she bought gift wrap and cards to go with them. Every time she did so, she had to drive to several different stores to buy all of the things she wanted—one place for the cards, several for the different gifts, someplace else for the gift wrap. So she decided to open her own store where she would sell all of the things she liked to buy, all under one roof.
She found a space on SE Hawthorne, in a district that was just beginning to change from gas stations and bars and dry cleaners to one of specialty retail stores.
The store she started then, Presents Of Mind, at 3633 SE Hawthorne, is still going strong twenty years later. It is twice its original size and is now run by Chaser’s daughter, Seasons Sparks Koll.
Crowded with merchandise and shoppers, the store continues to sell cards, gifts, and gift wrap. Koll said the number of ite
 |
| Part of the card selection |
ms the store sells numbers in the thousands. She now has twelve employees.
Presents of Mind must have one of the highest ratios of items per square foot of any store in Portland. No aisle seems to go more than a few feet in any direction. Not that any shopper would want to stride through the store quickly. On every shelf one finds another delightful object: magnets, rubber stamps, blank books, ribbon, stickers, earrings, pins and much, much more.
Moderately-priced clothing is a recent addition to the inventory. The store stocks dresses, T-shirts, hoodies, jackets, baby wear and now carries its own line of clothing bearing the Presents of Mind name.
Presents of Mind has also opened an e-commerce Web site, ,
www.presentsofmind.tv
which sells an abbreviated, but still extensive, selection of merchandise—clothing, jewelry, accessories, paper products and items for baby, bath and home.
Koll is proud of the amount of locally-made merchandise she carries. “I firmly believe in keeping money local,” she says. “Many of our vendors are single moms and stay-at-home women, who need an outlet like this.” Seventy-five percent of the jewelry the store carries is made locally and most of the cards are made locally too.
Presents of Mind is open from 10 am to 7 pm every day. The phone number is 503.230.7740.
