LaDifference Closing West Broad Village Showroom to Focus on Original Location

A local contemporary home furnishings store that opened a Short Pump location a year ago is going back to its roots. LaDifférence announced Monday that it’s closing its location at West Broad Village in Short Pump. The company will hold a liquidation at the store, with similar deals at its flagship location in Shockoe Bottom.

January 10, 2012; 10:44 AM • by Trevor Dickerson

LaDifference staff work together to clean the West Broad Village store just before it opened a year ago

At West Broad Village, the liquidation is meant to help move the floor samples out. Downtown, where sales remain strong, the company intends to reduce inventory to make room for products from the Short Pump store. The liquidation will run through February.

“Sales have been decent at West Broad Village and we could justify staying open, but most people preferred to drive a few extra miles to our downtown store for the full experience,” co-owner Andy Thornton said. “We hoped for more traffic at West Broad than we received, but most of the commercial spaces there are leaning toward restaurants, which draw more nighttime crowds than retail shoppers.”

Thornton added that closing the West End store will let the company focus on the traction around the Shockoe Design District. This movement began transpiring in 2011 when retailers, architects, advertising agencies, restaurants, and residents started coming together to make Shockoe Bottom the city’s center for design and celebrate creativity and innovation.

“West Broad was an experiment, and after a year we reaffirmed what we always knew, which is that we are urban retailers,” Thornton said.

LaDifference joins a growing list of local businesses who started in downtown or in Carytown and closed one or both locations after attempting to expand to Short Pump, including Bev’s Ice Cream, It’s Hip To Be Round, Soak! and Glass & Powder Board Shop.

LaDiff’s two employees in the West End will move to the downtown store. There are no layoffs.