IDAHO FALLS — At The WAREhouse, it’s clear that working hard and having fun are not mutually exclusive.

As Kassie Traughber, one of the founders of the Idaho Falls store, says, she’s “living the real-life version of ‘The Golden Girls’ every day.”

Traughber as well as Teresa Bush, Audrey Henrie and Dawn Moldenhauer opened the business in December 2019, and it has been booming since then, drawing customers from across the region as well as across the country and growing to include 13 vendors.

The WAREhouse specializes in refurbished furniture and decor, but also offers everything from jewelry, handbags, dog treats, clothing, including a whole section of children’s items, and much more. The store is massive, and there’s something new to discover around every corner.

Bush and Moldenhauer, as well as Diana Lee and her daughter-in-law Kat Lee, who are also vendors, sat down with the East Idaho Business Journal at their shop on a recent Wednesday, and it was clear that they have an easy, jovial energy among them.

“It's so much fun,” said Traughber, who couldn’t make it to the in-person interview, but chatted with the EIBJ via phone call afterward. “... It is a blast and it's literally like the ladies are hilarious. Even if they're not trying to be funny, they say the most random things, so I'm literally in hysterics the first half of the week.”

The four founders began working together when they were vendors at the now-defunct Vintage Emporium on Capital Avenue in Idaho Falls. When the woman who ran that business decided to retire and sell the building, these women decided they wanted to find a home of their own.

“We just looked for a place and fell upon this one, which has been a huge blessing,” Bush said. “It’s been a much better location, much better building. The roof was leaky over there. And, oh, it was a nightmare.”

The move to the building on a busy corner at 1352 S. Holmes Ave. proved to be lucrative as well.

“At first we didn't know how we were going to pay the rent,” Moldenhauer said. That turned out not to be a problem as their sales tripled immediately.

“This is such a busy road,” Bush said. “We didn't realize how busy it was until we moved here, so a lot of people drive by and look at the window. And it brings in new people every day.”

Another thing that drives business to the store is that economic concept of scarcity: Nearly everything at the business — especially the furniture and decor — is one of a kind.

Additionally, the store is only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday, giving vendors time to bring in new items and completely reset the store every week, thus building up hype every week.

“We do bring in a lot of new stuff every week,” Bush said. “Like, an enormous amount.”

On Wednesday nights after everything is in its place for the week, Traughber — who runs all the business’s very active social media accounts and who the other women agreed is the leader of their group — does a Facebook Live, going through the entire store and pointing out everything that’s new.

“Thursday mornings are really busy,” Bush said. “A lot of people come in and make a beeline. They saw it on the Live, they know what they want, and they just make a beeline for it.”

There’s no guarantee that if you wait, the item will still be there.

“Then Saturday they come in and, ‘Where's this? Oh, it sold on Thursday?’” Moldenhauer said.

“Or it sold when you were walking to the back of the store,” Diana Lee added.

“So many customers will go, ‘Oh, I want to buy this,’ and they’ll walk around the store and come back and someone's already taken the tag and purchased it. And they’re like, ‘Where did that go?’” Kat Lee said. “So we tell our customers if you see something you want to take the tag because it might not be here by the time you can get around.”

Or, Moldenhauer said, customers will see something they like but decide to check out other stores first.

“And a lot of the time the people come in in the morning, and they see something they want and then they think they're gonna go find it somewhere else,” she said. “And they're back in the afternoon …”

“... And it’s gone,” Diana Lee finished. “Everything is one of a kind. You can’t get another one. Occasionally, in a rare moment, we might find another one, but chances are we're not going to do it the same.”

The WAREhouse has customers who come in every week.

“It’s their therapy,” Diana Lee said. “They like to come walk around. I think it's even more than that, though. I think they just know all of us and they feel like they can come in and kind of be themselves, too, and maybe find something and maybe not, but most of it, they really just want to be able to come in and walk around and say hi."

Moldenhauer added, “They walk in here and when they walk out, they’re friends.”

Word of The WAREhouse has spread, and now they see people from all over the region, including from Jackson, Wyoming.

“We've had people come over and they'll go home and say, ‘I didn't know this was here. I'm gonna tell everybody,’” Diana Lee said.

Moldenhauer added, “And then we have people (who say), ‘I'm not gonna tell anybody because this is my place.’”

They’ve also had people visit from as far away as Alaska and the East Coast.

One of the reasons people are likely drawn to the store is because of its reasonable prices.

“We’ve tried to keep it affordable,” Bush said. “I've had a lot of people say how much they appreciate our prices.”

A lot of the work that goes into running the store is simply locating items to refurbish and resell. The vendors get their items everywhere from thrift stores to Facebook Marketplace to estate and garage sales. Sometimes they’ll even take trips down to Utah.

“We all have big cargo trailers,” Bush said. “And so we'll take them down and just load them up in a weekend and come back because there's a lot more to choose from down there.

All the vendors are independent from one another, each with their own section in the store that they rent, but they spend a lot of time together and they each take turns manning the store throughout the month.

“Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I am barely a mom and a wife. I just focus on the store,” said Traughber, who has four young daughters. “And then the days that we’re actually open I can relax and because we all take turns working so I don't have to actually be present.”

Other than the required setup every week, this arrangement is pretty flexible for everyone involved.

“It's the best of all worlds,” Diana Lee said. “It really is.”

“We’re all good together,” Moldenhauer said. “So we all know if somebody needs another day off, everybody's very willing to do whatever to help. … I have had two deaths in my family in the last year. This is my happy place where I can come here and not think about what's there. And these guys just filled in for me. I mean, they just took it upon themselves to make sure that everything was done.”

Bush added, “It’s like a family. We all love each other and support each other.”

Part of that support comes from oohing and ahhing over what new items their colleagues bring in each week.

“It makes us better at what we do, too,” Kat Lee said. “Because you see something, ‘Oh, I would have never thought of that.’ Then when you come across it later you go, ‘Okay, like this is something I could maybe (work on).’ We keep each other fresh.”

While each vendor is different, they all seem to go well together.

“One thing I hear customers say a lot when I work is how it's interesting how each vendor has their own style, but we're all very cohesive,” Kat Lee said. “So you could easily shop from one vendor or you could easily blend from all of them. And I think that's another thing that makes our store really unique is that we're all individual but we are all, you know, something that you could one-stop shop.”

With so much going on in the shop, it’s a bit hard to summarize.

“I say we’re an experience,” Kat Lee said. “I think a lot of people just like to walk around and get ideas or see what we've worked with. It's a lot of people who say, ‘I have to walk around a second time now just to see what I missed,’ you know, and it's a good time killer.

Diana Lee added, "It's like Pinterest in a box.”

The WAREhouse is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. For more information, visit thewarehouseidaho.weebly.com or follow the business on Facebook and Instagram, @thewarehouseidaho.