AREO owners look back on 30 years of business in Laguna Beach as they prepare to close brick-and-mortar shop
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After three decades of being a leader in style in Laguna Beach, AREO, a home décor and gift shop in the downtown area, is set to move out of its brick-and-mortar location at the end of February.
Owners Kevin Mundt and Dave Thomas have made the decision to focus on their primary venture, a wholesale business called HomArt.
The duo have worked to design products and then have them produced. Thomas said they now have nearly 4,000 products that they wholesale to other retailers and have showrooms in Atlanta, Dallas and Las Vegas.
A loyal customer base allowed AREO to traverse a perilous start, which included opening the doors during turbulent economic times and surviving flooding in its infancy following the 1993 wildfire in Laguna Beach.
“We’ve had a great run, 30 great years,” Thomas said. “We opened when the economy wasn’t great back in 1992. We had a lot of local customers coming in asking us why we were opening in such a bad economy, but fortunately, they were buying things as they were asking, so we were able to grow our local customer base immensely.”
AREO has been located at 207 Ocean Ave. since its inception. It will continue to operate in an online capacity, an avenue that the owners said they began to explore when they started seeing a different kind of client after the television show “Laguna Beach” came out in 2004.
“I think maybe the ‘Laguna Beach’ show pulled more tourists into town, but we’re very tourist-friendly,” Mundt said. “We have a lot of people walking to the beach right by the shop, so a lot of them stop in.
“That’s one of the reasons we went online with areohome.com. … I think it gives them that connection because they were here vacationing, and it’s this little shop they can order from still. We ship all over.”
When the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce began holding a holiday window decorating contest, AREO earned a reputation for joining in the festivities. Its ample window frontage and ever-changing displays, combined with overhang lights, made it a hit during the holidays.
That was evident again on a busy Hospitality Night, even though the business itself is a short walk over from the Promenade on Forest and the Peppertree Lot, where most of the activities and entertainment were taking place.
AREO won the holiday window decorating contest, but Mundt said the one constant in each year follows the holiday season.
“The one thing we do annually ... is to switch out from Christmas holiday red to the white tumbleweed windows,” Mundt said. “We’ve been doing that since we opened.”
Customers came to expect consistency in the look and feel of the shop, as well as the products available at AREO. Thomas has always done the buying, and his partner noted that he has a talent for merchandising displays that helped the retail store stand out.
Personal care products, soaps and candles proved popular with customers, but new stuff would find its way into the store, too. In late December, the store contained handcrafted angels, garden gnomes, reindeer, Santa dolls, and miniature Christmas trees. There were also the customary walls for candles and greeting cards.
Another thing the owners enjoyed providing was their complimentary signature gift wrap service, completed with the use of craft boxes, satin ribbon, and a French gold wax seal.
Mundt and Thomas, who moved from Chicago to Laguna Beach, recently held a 30th birthday celebration for their AREO family. A few dozen current and former employees showed up to the store in August to commemorate the milestone.
The couple, who now reside in San Juan Capistrano, also took pride in providing first jobs to young people in the community, teaching them good business practices and work ethic along the way.
“That’s really been rewarding for us,” Thomas said. “Seeing a lot of these younger people grow from being very shy and coming in and not really knowing how to approach people and interact on a business level and see them transform into sales associates, where they go up and greet and are much more confident and competent.
“A lot of them have come back and told us that was really a great experience for them, too, which is nice.”
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