During that period in Cargo’s history, the company-owned stores were located in major shopping malls and the new owner and Bishop thought that they should lease space in a new mall opening in Greenville. As Bishop puts it, “We fell flat on our faces.”
In 1991, the owner offered to sell the business to Bishop, and she bought it in April of that year.
“We moved into a strip center, which was a good thing, but there was also a little recession that year,” she said. “After awhile, I thought that I’d saturated the market with crate-style furniture and started trying to come up with a new idea.”
By April 2010, Bishop had converted her store over to a children’s-only room décor resource selling a wealth of manufacturers and changed the name to Cargo & Kids. At about the same time as the grand reopening, a local Web site designer contacted Bishop about creating an Internet presence, which she did.
A few months later when Bishop checked her email, there were requests from people looking for creative, unique children’s furnishings. She now ships products all across the country to customers who find her online.
Seeing a void in the Wilmington, N.C., market for a children’s home furnishings store, Bishop set her sights on opening a store there by 2013. Some legal wrangling with Cargo prohibited Bishop from using the Cargo name in Wilmington, so in 2011 when she opened three years ahead of schedule in the market, Bishop opened as Your Child’s Room. Then, she moved the Greenville store into a new space and changed the name of that store in August.
“At the end of 2010, we were nothing but a Cargo furniture store,” Bishop said. “We even bought our accessories from them. Now, we offer a wealth of furniture products, and we buy from more than 75 accessories companies.”
