What's next for Buff City Soap location in Downtown Memphis?

Since the coronavirus pandemic took hold of Shelby County, business has been booming for natural soap-seller Buff City Soap.

With frequent hand washing among the top ways to safeguard from the potentially deadly virus, the company has seen an uptick in sales in person, for curbside pickups and online, said Julia Evans, regional director for Memphis.

"Our business is booming right now," Evans said.

Evans said as the pandemic has raged on, customers have consistently been visiting corporate-owned stores in Midtown, Bartlett and Olive Branch. 

But as Downtown office workers transitioned to working from home in mid March and the area emptied of foot traffic, Buff City Soap's location at 101 S. Main St. closed down and has remained that way since. Because the store is on a stretch of Main Street that is impassible to cars, curbside options that worked well at other locations could not be safely adopted there.

On Friday afternoon, Evans and an employee stopped by the location to prep inventory to be moved out. The soap and other products inside will be sold at deep discounts at an upcoming flash sale, Evans said.

No date has been set for the sale, but she said it will be announced on social media.

Once the inventory is gone, what will happen to the store is still up in the air.

While sales at other locations have more than made up for the losses at the Downtown store caused by the closure, the company still has four years left in its lease of the building.

Evans said the company already had plans to undergo a rebranding. They will take advantage of this time while the store is closed to rebuild it from the ground up with their new vision for it in mind. 

In the end it could remain a retail store like the others, but it's also possible that store will be remade to test out new concepts.

"We're pretty sure we're keeping it," Evans said of the Downtown location. "But we're just not sure what it's going to be yet."

Buff City Soap has seen exponential growth in recent years. Founder Brad Kellum started the company as Bartlett Soap Company, mixing ingredients by hand in his garage and selling to his neighbors in 2013.

Now the company has dozens of franchises stretching as far north as Ohio, west as Arizona, south as Florida and several in the Memphis area and across Tennessee.

The Downtown store started with the help of the Downtown Memphis Commission's Open on Main program that covers some of the overhead costs to let new and established retailers try out new locations along Main Street with less risk.

After a successful run in the Open on Main program, Buff City Soap opened a permanent location. It is among the most successful businesses to come out of that program.

After hiring a new CEO in 2019, the company recently confirmed it would be moving its corporate office to Dallas, though it's possible some operations may remain in Memphis.

In addition to its four corporate-owned area locations, there are five Mid-South franchises in Arlington, Millington, Southaven, Germantown and Collierville. The company plans to open another area store in October in the Poplar Commons Plaza next door to Chicken Salad Chick near Poplar Avenue and South Perkins Road.

Desiree Stennett covers economic development and business at The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at desiree.stennett@commercialappeal.com, 901-529-2738 or on Twitter: @desi_stennett.