All settled in and ready to go, Ragged Mountain Sports has moved into its new location at 810 Highway 133 in Carbondale, behind Dollar Tree. For the team, it feels just like home.
“It’s so exciting to be in space that actually fits Ragged again,” owner Aisha Weinhold said.
Ragged was originally located in what was the Sopris Shopping Center before the complex was recently demolished. For 10 years, Weinhold and her team operated with a month-to-month lease well aware that at some point they would need to relocate due to the development plans.
When the time finally came to move in April 2021, rental inventory was low and a spot in Satank was their only option.
“Moving to Satank was just — we didn’t have anywhere else to move,” Weinhold sighed. “We literally couldn’t find another spot. The alternative was to close, and I’m not going to close,” she stated. “It was tough to be there because it was so disconnected from town and who we were.”
While Weinhold tried to make the Satank spot work, she continued viewing other locations. All the while, manifesting what Ragged’s home should truly look like.
“I was dreaming of a space that had a mezzanine,” Weinhold explained. “I looked at a space before we were going to move and it had the coolest mezzanine, but that building didn’t go through.”
In the end, fortune favored Ragged when a chance connection opened the doors to Weinhold’s dream.
The current location’s “previous owner came into Ragged when we were still in Satank with his business card and said he thought we needed a new space,” Weinhold told The Sopris Sun. “One of my boys sent me a photo of it… and I was ready to pull the trigger and pay $35 per square foot.” She excitedly added, “I went over there and it had the mezzanine, and I was like, ‘this is it!’”
Boasting double the space of the Satank store, its new location has 80% effective, usable area compared to 50-60% at the original store. It includes higher ceilings that create a fresh shopping experience, Weinhold’s mezzanine and, perhaps most importantly, a long-term lease.
With a stable spot the team has begun personalizing the space for the entire community to enjoy. In particular, a dear friend of Weinhold and artist, Emma Yardley, recently came to Carbondale to create a mural that brings the outdoors to one of the business’ enormous walls.
Yardley, a well established artist with clients that include Yeti and Patagonia, had never created a mural this big before. Interestingly, she never had added color or used paint because she typically uses black sharpie alone, according to Weinhold. For Ragged, however, Yardley created a stunning mural that features a brilliantly colored sun kissing the ridgeline of Mount Sopris.
“She gave us this huge colored sun and I was speechless when I saw it,” Weinhold said. “She’s been doing art for years and it’s the only piece that has color. It just really ties it all together.”
Capitalizing on her extensive background in events, Weinhold intends to welcome the community into the shop with a variety of events in the future. Although the pandemic put a halt on gatherings, plans for a speaker series, gear repair workshops, outdoor movie nights and more are in the works.
The bigger space allows for more consignment than ever before and the quality of the gear keeps getting better, Weinhold stated. The team only accepts consignment the first two weeks of every month, but with nearly 8,000 consignors those two weeks of intake have kept everyone busy.
“We have so much good gear that is constantly coming in. With a full team checking in we’re open Monday through Sunday and we can barely keep up,” Weinhold said. “The staff works really, really hard to make sure that everyone’s stuff is taken care of.”
Despite the last several months of change, the heart and soul of Ragged’s mission has remained the same: to keep cherished gear out of the landfills.
The store’s consignment policy also remains the same. Most notably, consignment accounts that have been inactive — meaning no buying or selling — for one year will receive store credit and after two years the accounts will be zeroed out.
To learn more about Ragged Mountain Sports, check out www.raggedmountainsports.com and be sure to swing by its new home for deals on outdoor adventure gear!