T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Thrifty Buzzarr, located inside of the Marshalltown Mall at 2500 S. Center St., will be closing its doors on June 30. Another mall store, Live Now Consign and Design, closed earlier this month.

Earlier this month, Live Now Consign closed its door at Marshalltown Mall. On June 30, another mall business, Thrifty Buzzarr, will also shut down.

“I don’t want to give up, but I have to,” said Thrifty Buzzarr owner Wendy Siefken, who brought her existing family-run business to the mall in the fall of 2021. “I opened up there around the same time Live Now Consign did.”

Siefken’s entrepreneurialism began back in November 2017 when she opened a used bookstore that also housed other vendors. But she said she was forced to relocate a total of four times due to parking constraints, wheelchair accessibility and operational costs. To help boost business during the COVID-19 shutdown, she branched out from exclusively selling books to also adding antiques, collectibles, Steampunk and more.

“Rent wasn’t bad at my first two locations. The third one on Main Street was higher because the building had been renovated due to the tornado,” she noted. “After that building sold, I looked into the mall, and the price was affordable.”

But, she soon discovered, utilities would push her beyond her budget.

“The electric bill was what killed me. We have no air conditioner — just the lights and fans on — and our electric bill was $2,000 this month,” she said. “Our space is 12,000 square feet.”

She added that in her opinion, the age of the mall’s heating and cooling equipment might factor into the costs.

Siefken said she has no immediate plans to reopen in a new location because rent is higher elsewhere.

“For rent and space, the mall is the best value. Scott, the mall manager, has always been wonderful, too,” she said. “We looked at a couple of places that were half or a third of the size of our mall location and (landlords) wanted $5,000 or $6,000 a month and that did not include utilities.”

She noted running a business out of the mall has its perks. Foot traffic brought in loyal customers, as well as good visibility from the highway. Now, she’s working to clear her inventory by offering a going out of business sale.

The store is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Gabe and Joy Vanlandschoot, owners of Live Now Consign, did not respond to requests for comment. They previously told the T-R they loved their store’s location in the mall and appreciated how welcoming people in Marshalltown are.

On Facebook, they thanked their customers.

While their Marshalltown shop is closed, they still operate a location in Grinnell.

John Hall, president and CEO of the Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce, said his organization works closely with Chamber business members to help them grow and connect with customers. He noted he and his staff met with Siefken several times to offer assistance.

“The reality of businesses is they come and go. It’s sometimes put on the Chamber to do enough to keep all businesses in business but we can only do so much,” Hall said. “If the other store would have reached out, we would have been happy to at least connect and see what resources we might have been able to provide.”

Hall said his hope is that new businesses will soon fill the spots left by the recent closures. He said the Small Business Development Center, which the Chamber works with, offers counseling and training services related to finance, marketing, management, human resources and more.

“I’m not a business major, so I don’t know all the little tricks of the trade to do, but I’ve done everything I could think of, with advertising, Facebook, and stuff like that, but it’s hard to get ahead,” Siefken said.