If you’re looking for something special for the little ones this Christmas season, you need look no further than downtown Golden.
The Jungle Room is gearing up for an exciting and busy holiday season. Golden’s most child friendly store, located right on 9th Avenue North, carries some of the most unique lines in children’s clothing and toys.
“We do both clothing and toys, we do some maternity, and a lot of baby accessories, which we’ve been expanding into more,” said Cheryl Donnelly, who owns the store with her husband Ian.
“As far as toys, we try to stick to the lines you’re not going to find at big box stores, Wal-Mart, Zellers, that sort of place… We don’t want to be carrying the same product you can find everywhere. They’re more specialty or novelty lines.”
Cheryl and Ian opened the store three years ago, and although it has, at times, been a struggle operating a small business in Golden, they enjoy the work immensely.
“I wanted to open up a store, so I started to research what was missing in Golden. My uncle has a kid’s clothing store in Invermere, and my aunt has a toy store in Invermere, so they knew all the connections and were able to help me with making the right contacts and getting set up,” said Cheryl. “It was very helpful.”
Having children themselves, Ian and Cheryl were already familiar with certain lines and product that they liked.
“With my aunt and uncle owning the stores, I had gotten a lot of stuff from them over the years, and I knew what I liked and what I didn’t,” said Cheryl.
Some of the popular items in the Jungle Room include Billibong, O’Neil, Roxy, Quicksilver and Mexx clothing, Manhattan toys, Calico Critters, Schleich Animals, as well as rattles and teething stuff which are difficult to find in Golden with the same quality.
“We’re pretty good at figuring out what sells and what people are looking for. And if it doesn’t sell, we clear it out and bring in something new,” said Ian.
The Jungle Room is open Monday to Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and will be expanding to seven days a week when it gets closer to Christmas.
“People have already started coming in to check things out for Christmas, doing like a pre-run,” said Ian.
