Businesses join forces to maximize assets

ALBANY — After sitting vacant for the better part of the last decade, the former Harley Davidson dealership on Dawson Road next to Austin’s Fire Grill, is occupied by a new bohemian family of businesses, hoping to work in tandem to offer a new shopping and creative experience to the citizens of South Georgia.

Customers entering the location will first encounter Relics to Riches, a new unit mall-style boutique that offers space for different area vendors to display and sell a variety of goods, including clothing, crafts and antiques.

Upon further inspection, however, visitors will also find the new home of Three Forty Creative Group, a business run by locals Evan Barber and Justin Andrews, that offers music lessons, studio space and marketing services as well as full turn key concert and event company that handles booking, staging, and promotion for shows and events.

While the marriage of the two groups might seem odd at first, Andrews explained that bringing the businesses together actually helps them both out and provides something new for customers and for prospective vendors.

“It’s a great use of this space,” Barber said. “With this you’ve got a lot of people who couldn’t just go into a building and sign a lease and say, ‘I’m going to sell my shirts.’ This spot offers them a little spot and if they grow they can get a bigger spot. For us, with the retail space here it brings things together. As far as our music lessons and our every day business is concerned, it gives the moms and dads something to do. We’re all helping each other.”

Lauren Bailey, who along with her husband Randy, owns Relics to Riches and shares in the new venture with Andrews and Barber, sees the partnership as something that makes sense in terms of creativity, something she is hoping to foster on the retail side of the business.

“Our tag line is ‘Where Creative Minds Collide,’” said Bailey. “There’s stuff in here that you can’t find anywhere else around; it’s really unique. Of the 60 vendors we’ve got, only a handful are from Albany. Relics to Riches means from old to new, to fancy to creative. We’re trying to hit everything in between.”

Bailey said so far the store has vendors ranging from brand, new do it yourself artists selling T-Shirts, to established stores with multiple years in retail, like Knights Outlet and Sasser Antiques.

“We really have a little bit of everything,” said Bailey. “Folks can come in and rent space and and we’ll sell it for them.”

In addition to joining forces with Relics to Riches, the move to the larger space helps Three Forty for two other reasons. First they felt the opportunity to partner with another business would generate interest and offer more for their clients. Secondly, the move allows Barber and Andrews to take advantage of excess space in the back of the building that the pair are working to turn into a brand new concert venue for local and regional acts, called the The Stage.

In it’s former space Three Forty could only hold roughly 200 people watching a performance on a relatively small stage. The new location, however, will hold 1,000 people and feature a much larger stage, replete with a state of the art sound system, lighting system and video screens, to move attendees more in line with the big budget concert experience the company offers it’s outside clients.

“Our (old) place was not big enough to do a big show,” said Barber. “If we had a big band we couldn’t get enough people in there to cover it. If we had a small band not enough people came to do them consistently. Here I think we can do them. It’s also going to be a good looking, good sounding show. When we do an event, we put our concentration on an atmosphere. This will give us a space to do the things we normally do when we put on shows in Valdosta or Atlanta for our clients.”

Barely able to contain his excitement Andrews went a step further saying that the new venue would be something that area concert goers aren’t used to seeing anywhere in the immediate area.

“The focus here will be not be like a bar where you sit down at a table and listen, but rather it’ll have the effects and such that you’d get at a big city show,” said Andrews. “The sound, the lights the staging will be top notch. We kind of nerd our on stuff like that, so we’re excited to be able to put something like this together.”

Andrews and Barber both agree that the venue will not only be unique in terms of the production capabilities, but they also envision it as a place where musicians of all kinds can come and put on a show as well as promote shows for other people.

“We’ll have all genres,” said Andrews. “This isn’t just a place for country music or a dance room. It’s going to be for everything from EDM (Electronic Dance Music) to rock and roll to whatever. This is a chance for everybody to be a promoter. If you’ve got a band and you think you want to put five or six bands together and do a show, then we want to work with you on that. We want to make sure everyone has a chance to play here.”

While The Stage area of the new space is certainly one of the highlights of the move, the duo is also excited about the effect the move will have on their music lesson business.

Andrews and Barber also envision a future where they are also able to use The Stage space when not being used for shows, to host non-profit events, summer camps, art camps and other creative endeavors.

“We support art and artistic endeavors,” said Andrews. “We feel this can be a place that will bring creativity together.”

Barber, who has found a modicum of success as a musician himself, feels that encouraging creativity is vitality important to young people and feels that the opportunity for he Three Forty to offer music lessons is somewhat of an emotional anchor for all the things the company does.

“We love doing the lessons, getting kids in here and showing them things,” Barber said. “Kids today are just so into things that don’t matter. If your computer breaks down or your car blows up, you can still sit down and sing a song. That’s something tangible.”

The musical and creative education won’t stop with the youth of the community either, as Bailey, Andrews and Barber are also planning to use The Stage space during the day time to help another segment of the population find peace in creativity, through Bailey’s other business, Bailey Health Care.

“I’m a nurse as my full time job,” Bailey said. “We became providers for the state of Georgia, we have a contract and take care of the developmentally disabled. They need a day program and so the back part of the building is not only going to be The Stage, but during daytime hours, from 8-2 we’re going to have cubicles where they can do arts, crafts, paint, whatever they choose.”

While it will be roughly six months before Bailey Health Care will be able to use the space during the daytime, Andrews and Barber are looking to get The Stage ready for shows by early summer and intend to have something going on every Saturday night.

Until that time, however, the group is thrilled to have the opportunity to work together and do something new and exciting in Albany.

“It’s so cool and it’s all wrapped into one thing,” Andrews said. “We’re helping them and we’re helping us. We’re very thankful that we can do this.”

Relics to Riches/Three Forty Creative Group/The Stage is located at 2815 Old Dawson Road. Relics to Riches is already open to the public and Three Forty Creative Group will begin operating and offering lessons out of the space beginning today.