Named from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” The Rabbit Hole is a fanciful emporium of unique gift and decorating ideas.
Located at 1318 Bigley Ave., beside the Bigley Avenue Barber Shop and a hop, skip and jump from the Bigley Piggly Wiggly supermarket and Bigley Avenue on Charleston’s West Side, The Rabbit Hole opened for business approximately six months ago.
Owner/proprietor Jessica Lilly of Sissonville said she had worked at a nail salon farther down Bigley Avenue until she was told of the vacant building where The Rabbit Hole now stands.
“I was doing nails down the road at Tabitha’s Salon,” Lilly recounted last week. “My friend from junior high was one of the barbers next door here. I was on Facebook one night ... I hadn’t talked to him for a while, but I saw his light on on Facebook. We started talking.
“I’d been looking for a place to do this. I like to work for myself. I like doing the T-shirt-making thing and sign making. I’ve also collected knives, so we have a knife section. The concealed-carry purses — I’ve always been into that. Body jewelry, I started selling that when I started doing nails. I was just looking for a little place to put a this-and-that store. My friend said, ‘We have half a shop over here,’ so, within a month, we opened up.”
Lilly said she has met several local artists since launching The Rabbit Hole, and she features some of their work in her shop. The inventory, she said, is largely “whatever I can find, wherever I can find it. Most of my glass comes from suppliers out West. The purses come from somewhere in Texas. But there are a bunch of artists from around here who want to put their stuff up here. I have a guy who’s making hemp bracelets.”
Customer response and sales have been favorable so far, she said.
“There’s such a big supply and demand here that I can’t keep up with it. I had a whole case of body jewelry about a month ago, and it’s down to a table. I don’t have time to make any more orders right now,” Lilly said.
As for her personal tastes, she said, “I just like unique and different. Like the Jack Daniel’s bottle lamps. They’re so cool. A guy down the road came here with those.
“I like the kind of reused stuff.”
The Rabbit Hole is located at 1318 Bigley Ave. in Charleston. Hours of operation are 2 to 8 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and from 11 a.m. onward on Fridays and Saturdays. Lilly said she keeps flexible closing times because of a habit she shares with “Alice in Wonderland”’s pressed-for-time and often harried March Hare.
“’I’m late, I’m late, I’m always late,’” Lilly said, laughing. “That is why The Rabbit Hole came to be, really. Everybody was saying to me, ‘You’re always late,’ and I’m like, ‘I know. I got stuck in the Rabbit Hole.’
“My friends or other people will come in,” she said, “and we’ll start talking and it’ll be two hours later and they’ll say, ‘Man, I’ve been here for two hours!’ The Rabbit Hole just kind of sucks you in.
“I usually close at 8. Sometimes I’m open until midnight or 1. It just depends on who’s coming in, how cold it is. If it’s not real cold, there’s a lot of foot traffic coming in from the street. People will stop in and say, ‘Hey, what’s in here?’”
For further information, contact The Rabbit Hole at 304-590-4876.
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