By Neil Johnson - Febuary 20th 2024
JANESVILLE
Downtown Janesville merchant Courtney Perakis is putting her candy store, the Sugar Exchange, on the auction block.
After three years in business selling specialty chocolates, handmade candy and ice cream soda drinks on North Main Street, Perakis says she’s looking to sell off the business plus its website at auction in early March.
Perakis leases space now at North Main, but the store’s been closed several weeks pending the sale.
Perakis says she’d planned to move from North Main to a bigger space on West Milwaukee Street and expand to include coffee, tea and a space for kids’ parties and special events. That plan was slow to take off, in part because Perakis said it required hiring extra full-time staff.
Then, a refrigeration pipe break in December at Sugar Exchange’s existing North Main Street location put the freeze on both Perakis’s Christmas retail season — and her plans to move and expand.
Perakis, a former air traffic controller and financial advisor, says she hopes the March auction draws a buyer who wants to move the Sugar Exchange forward and keep it in Janesville. She says she thinks any downtown merchant, especially one selling a niche product, must be sure to cultivate a strong stream of online selling in tandem with its brick-and-mortar business.
Perakis says she’d even sell her business’s as-of-yet unrealized plans for expansion, which she says a local lender had continued to endorse.
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