Linens-N-More a locally-owned mainstay on Main Street

After passing by a Main Street block of restaurants and tourist attractions, a Fredericksburg shopper might find a corner shop openly inviting them into a room filled with soft things.

Various beds are made up with colorful quilts, throw blankets and pillows. The wall is adorned with shelf-over-shelf of stacked towels of various colors and fabrics. Quilts hang across the wall like multi-colored wallpaper.  

Linens-N-More is unique to any other shop in Fredericksburg, and possibly even to most large cities. It is a retail store packed full of quilts, blankets, pillows, comforters, sheets, kitchen towels and a variety of unexpected items.

“We carry literally 2,000 quilts and there’s nobody in their right mind whose going to carry 2,000 quilts,” said Jim Richardson, owner of the store. “But we sell them.”

Richardson spent most of his life in the world of linens and pillows. After college, he worked at Joske’s in San Antonio buying pillows and linens. Retirement from the company brought him to Fredericksburg to launch a linen store.

“I retired and when I was 50, I just came in looking for something to do,” said Richardson. “I had been in the home furnishings business and knew it. I just came in here and started opening a store.”

Now, Linens-N-More has been in operation for 19 years and has several long-term employees, many of whom do the buying for the store within their individual areas of expertise.

The buyers for the store do a considerable amount of digging and exploration to find products that are not easily found or readily available.

The quilts, for example, are mostly hand-made quilts from producers all over the nation.

“We have a lot of stuff in here that the whole world’s never seen, or they can’t get,” said Richardson about the custom products in the store.

The word “more” in the store’s name is meant to include a variety of unexpected items from straw hats to bathrobes. However, artwork is also a predominant part of the non-bedding offerings.

Most of the art carried in Linens-N-More are giclee, a type of art print that preserves the texture of an original painting without the high cost. They are usually made in limited supply and numbered as collector’s items.

Among these giclee prints are works by Andy Thomas. Thomas’ paintings of “The Democratic Club” and “The Republican Club” were popular items at Linens-N-More. Both paintings depict a social gathering of presidents from various points in history, intermingling despite their lives being decades apart. The prints were displayed in the front window of the store and a popular item for window-shoppers and buyers.  

Linens-N-More is an exclusive retailer of the Andy Thomas art prints.

A variety of other artworks hang for sale on the walls of the store, mostly depicting Texas and western themes.

Linens-N-More is also the only carrier of YourBedPillow (ybp), a company owned by Richardson. Ybp produces pillows of various sizes from extra soft to extra firm.

Richardson acknowledges that the pillows could be more profitable by producing them with lower quality materials, but he continues to create a pillow that is made from the products he sees as the best.

“This stuff is fiber, but it’s not garneted,” said Richardson. “It goes into a bale machine, it circulates it like down, weighs it and blows it into the pillow. The advantage is it will act like a down pillow without having allergies or having to kill a bird.”

The ybp pillows are now the most popular item sold in Linens-N-More.

“Right now, we sell 4,000 pillows about every 45 days,” said Richardson.

The ybp product has its own website and Richardson has hopes of getting the pillow into the national market.

Richardson guesses that most of the customers who buy a quilt in Linens-N-More walk in with no intention of buying one initially.

The colorful, soft and hand-crafted products have a way of alluring the shopper to walk out with a unique item that could not be found elsewhere.

Richardson is aware that his store is unique, and that Fredericksburg provides a retail environment that helps Linens-N-More to do what it does.

“We fit the building for what it is,” said Richardson. “It’s an old hardware store and our stuff fits really good in here.

“But if we were a chain, we couldn’t do what we’re doing here.”

Richardson observes the changes on Main Street and is aware that commercial real estate is becoming more expensive. With higher priced buildings comes higher retail rent, resulting in shops that must offer a product that can produce profits despite those high costs.

“You know, change sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s worse,” said Richardson. “I can’t judge because I don’t know. But the change is definitely here.”

No matter the changes, Linens-N-More continues to be a popular stop for visitors and locals alike who enjoy its unique atmosphere among downtown attractions.

“There’s not another store like this anywhere,” said Richardson.

Fredericksburg Standard P.O. Box 1639 Fredericksburg, TX 78624-4228 830-997-2155 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM M-F

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