Durango entrepreneur Cristina Grave, owner of Twilight Toys, opened a new toy and gifts store at 900 Main Ave. last month.
Grave first entered into the toy scene in 2017 because she felt there were not enough toy stores for children in the area. Now, she is the owner of three toy stores with two on Main Avenue and another, her original store, at Purgatory Resort.
Her latest toy store, Durango Treasures, has seen early success since opening in April, Grave said. Still, the store has room for improvement – new merchandise is on its way to the store, and she is looking for local businesses that are interested in having their products featured at Durango Treasures.
Grave has already formed a business relationship with JNG Puzzles of Durango, whose wooden ornaments and gifts are already available at her toy store.
“I met a lot of owners from the other stores as well and it’s been great,” she said. “Everybody is super-welcoming and talks to me. The ‘local feeling,’ for sure.”
She currently employs two full-time workers at Durango Treasures, but she intends to hire more employees so she can increase her hours during the tourist season, which she expects to get going around the end of May.
The toy store is currently open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and remains open until 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
Grave opened Durango Treasures for a couple of reasons. For one, her other toy store on Main Avenue, Twilight Toys, couldn’t accommodate larger items she wanted to sell, including baby strollers and pogo sticks.
But she also wanted to provide more items that would appeal to families as a whole, not just children, she said.
“I did a lot of research before we decided to open this store,” she said. “I walked almost all the stores downtown, trying to find what we could do in our store that we don’t have already on Main. Where everybody can shop but also find unique stuff.”
Durango Treasures features a baby boutique and toys for children, but it also offers inflatable tubes and rafts for summer swimming; a gardening section that includes pots and birdhouses; kitchenware and home decor and clothing for tourists who are expected to swarm Durango in the summertime.
Elizabeth Dilworth, retail employee at Durango Treasures, said one of the items she thinks people will be drawn to are moving suitcases – animal-shaped suitcases with handles and wheels designed so children can ride them as the parent pulls them along.
“It’s like the more friendly version of kid leashes,” she said. “You can keep them there and they’re having fun, but you’re not worrying about them leaving.”
One feature for children is the panning station, an artificial cave with a stream of water running across a table with wire mesh shelves. Kids can buy bags of gems and fossils and sift through the soil they are bundled with at the panning station to discover their prizes, Grave said.
The panning station was placed in an old dishwashing room, a remnant of the space’s days as the Irish Embassy Pub.
“Since we had a bunch of these rooms in this building, (we thought) what can we do to have something for the kids while they’re here?” Grave said. “Not just for the tourists but the locals, too, if they’re passing by.”
Grave said she wanted to incorporate something fun that also represented the history of Durango. She thought featuring mining in some way was her best idea, so she went with it.
Twilight Toys, Grave’s other toy store in downtown Durango, opened in April 2021. She said opening that store was “perfect” timing because it lined up right with when people appeared to be engaging with local businesses again.
“I think because so many businesses closed, too, we had so much support from locals,” she said. “It ended up being awesome. I cannot complain. I think it was the perfect time to open that store downtown.”
She said her stores are offering discounts to locals and any gift certificates for one of her stores are valid in all three of them.
cburney@durangoherald.com
