Entrepreneur Garth Marriott was looking for a place to expand his online pop culture retail store and an opportunity to interact face-to-face with his customers. The 25-year-old University alumnus found the perfect location to set up shop — his hometown of Eugene — and he now offers the latest in “cool” stuff.
Coolest Shop, located at 970 W. 7th Ave., opened in late April and sells the latest clothing, gadgets and sports items. The inventory covers everything from Transformers T-shirts to motorized scooters.
“Most of this stuff isn’t found in Eugene,” Marriott said. “And every week we try to get in new stuff.”
Coolest Shop carries more than 100 different items in the store, but just one of each item. The result is a store that is open and roomy yet densely packed with a variety of content.
Though Coolest Shop opened rather recently, Marriott’s business started online in May 2000. Marriott, who is editor in chief of Elixir Magazine, said he got the idea for Coolest Shop from the magazine’s “Coolest Stuff” issue.
Elixir magazine started six years ago at the University, and now prints 15,000 copies and can be found in all 50 states and in 10 different countries.
“It’s still Elixir magazine, but at the same time, we’re trying to do anything we can to make Elixir function as a promotional tool for Coolest Shop,” Marriott said.
In turn, his associates at Elixir help him select the products that Coolest Shop carries.
“We sit around Garth’s office and try on samples of clothes,” said Chad Boutin, Elixir’s photography editor. “We, as a collaborative effort, give our opinions.”

With the launching of Coolest Shop, Marriott said one of his goals is to create a place where he can pick and choose from many distributors so that only his favorite items will be sold. He said that as a child he was never able to find a single store that he was happy with, so he created his own.
He uses his connections with companies that provided slides and clothing samples for the “Coolest Stuff” issue of Elixir to get products for the store, he said.
Though the online store has been successful, Marriott chose to open up a store in Eugene not only to meet his customers, but also so he could get feedback on products first-hand and display the free samples that were accumulating in his office.
Marriott graduated from the University in 1997 with a major in fine arts and a minor in business. After spending a few years managing Elixir and getting Coolest Shop off the ground, Marriott has returned to the University to take a business class.
Marriott keeps Coolest Shop open from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and noon to 7 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Now that Coolest Shop has opened, Marriott is working hard on bringing people in, though he has yet to do any advertising, he said. The store gets about 10 to 20 customers a day, but Marriott said he expects that number to increase as the business stays around longer.
Marriott said a good idea is only part of what it takes to run a successful business, it also requires planning. “I feel like I’m on the verge of having a profitable business,” he said.