After about a year and a half in the Village, Elements Alternative Gifts will close Saturday, Carolyn Stellwag, co-owner of the business, said.
The store has experienced a drop in sales and is closing because of financial difficulties, Stellwag said.
Stellwag compared sales from Fall 2004 to Fall 2005; she said sales were down 25 percent.
When Stellwag and her husband Leo moved back to Muncie from Massachusetts in 2004, Carolyn Stellwag came with hopes of opening a store that would serve as a place for people to buy things that they could not find elsewhere in Muncie.
"We always wanted to open a store like Elements, but in Massachusetts it was impossible," she said. "We just didn't have the money, and there are stores like that in every town."
Senior Kate Moore, a religious studies and history major, sold her handmade jewelry to Elements. She said she was upset when she heard the news about the store closing.
"I was very upset, not just for myself, but for Carolyn and Leo because I know that this was Carolyn's big dream to have a shop," she said.
Moore originally sold jewelry to a similar store in Richmond, where she's from, and then started making it for Elements, she said. She found out about Elements closing in early October, and Carolyn Stellwag confirmed it in November, Moore said.
The store sold gem stones for pagan rituals, which the alternative community would have to buy in Indianapolis after Elements closes, Moore said.
"I think it will seriously affect the pagan community because now we have to go underground even more," Moore said. "The store was a real haven to us. Now we have to fight to keep people from thinking that we're a joke. We have to work that much more to get people to take us seriously."
Carolyn Stellwag said she would miss her customers more than anything else.
"I still feel badly because I know people are emotional about it," she said. "I've gotten close to a lot of my customers."
She said she did not plan on opening another store in the Village after Elements was closed.
"I feel like every time I go into the store, I feel like I'm going to a funeral," she said, "and I'm explaining why someone died."
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