Ke'Chic Boutique Relocates to Woodbridge

is relocating from College Park to Woodbridge, VA, shop owner Lesley Sedgwick said.

Sedgwick, who is seven months pregnant, said it made sense to move the location of the family-owned business closer to her Virginia home before her baby arrives this spring.

"We liked College Park ... It was a hard decision but it was just something that had to be done," she said.

While some speculate that the operating hours weren't consistent enough to keep the business afloat in College Park, Sedgwick disagreed. The store operated 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, she said.

However, she did have poor experiences with some of the students she hired to work at the shop, Sedgwick said. After watching security tape, she fired one employee who would leave in the middle of her workday, lock up the shop, and return hours later.

Because of her frustrating experiences with employees, Sedgwick said that she and her daughter, as well as two other employees, took over most of the hours, beginning in October 2011. She knew that the commute from Virginia would be too much once the baby arrived this spring.

While the new shop will be more than 50 miles away, shoppers can still purchase Ke'Chic clothing on the store's website.

This isn't the first time the family-owned business has adapted to a new location. Ke'Chic started out on U.S. Route 1 in North College Park in July 2009, then to the corner of Lehigh Road and Yale Avenue, hidden from U.S. Route 1 pedestrians by and .

While the The Diamondback reported that the city's economic development coordinator, Michael Stiefvater, thought that maybe the location was too discrete to attract customers, Sedgwick said her family deliberately chose the quieter location to create a level of privacy for shopping and special events.

"That was the intention of renting that space," Sedgwick said. Plus, it was twice the size of their original shop, she added.