Help Jen Overcome Debt and Health Challenges

Hi friends,

This is Amy Balzer-Pemberton and Melanie Eddy from Ypsilanti, Michigan. We are starting a GoFundMe to help our friend and local business owner, Jen Eastridge. If you've lived in Ypsi the last 5-6 years, you'll know Jen. She has a huge heart and worked so diligently to create community and safe places here in Ypsi... sometimes to her own detriment, because that's who she is.

Please read about our dear friend...

Jen’s deep love of Ypsi has manifested in many ways over the last six years.

It started with the quirky business plan based on “sparking joy” when Unicorn Feed & Supply opened its doors on Ypsi PRIDE 2018. Someone told her that “You can’t run a business business based on joy,” to which she replied, “Watch me.” It has always been much more than just a shop, but more so a community project, and a movement. Jen intentionally curated items that people of all ages, colors and sizes could relate to, which is why it is mainly animal centric. You won’t see any skinny, blond princesses or white mermaids in the shop, but what you will see is “purrmaids,” “pandacorns” and tiaras, which are for everyone. It was important to her that everyone who visited felt safe, seen and welcome.

With the community’s warm embrace of Unicorn Feed & Supply, Jen began dreaming and planning how she could further her work in Ypsi. She imagined a home/kitchen/garden shop inspired by her mom, Shirley, who taught her to love gardening, cooking and creating warm, welcoming spaces. She found the perfect home for this shop (which she named “Stone & Spoon”) in January 2020 - just two doors down from Unicorn Feed & Supply. When the world shut down a few weeks later, she had to lock the doors to Unicorn Feed & Supply, send staff home and figure out how to keep the business going while the world was hit with something we didn’t understand. Like most, she imagined that the world would go “back to normal.” She doubled down, worked day and night, pivoting daily to keep Unicorn afloat and continued developing Stone & Spoon, curating work by talented, local artisans so she could open that fall. Jen applied for grants and loans and continued pouring her own money into the shops to bring back her staff as soon as possible, and safeguarding them and the community with plexiglass shields at the registers, sanitizer stations and masks. She offered customers private appointments and virtual shop calls, as well as delivery and curbside pickup.

The unimaginable debt continued to accumulate while trying to keep the shops alive (and while hoping the world would begin showing up again). When it was becoming clear that the world’s shopping behavior was shifting retail in a bigger, more permanent way, Jen decided to activate the second floor over Stone & Spoon as another revenue stream and way to bring people into the space.

Reaching to her roots in the arts, she opened The Gallery at Stone & Spoon where she proceeded to curate and hang work by over 80 local artists over the next three years. Not only would The Gallery be an interactive space, which encouraged an “in-person” experience, but it provided a fresh platform for activism, exposure, community engagement and education. This created a family of artists who connected while showing and selling their work to the local art-loving community.

Jen pushed on, holding workshops, cooking classes, exhibitions and parties up in the gallery, all while trying to pay close attention to the world and the way it was shifting for so many, but especially retail. Many people no longer work from offices, but from the comfort of their home which meant lower foot traffic downtown. What began as a necessity for safety, the world became dependent on having items delivered to their front porch, which completely changed the relevance or necessity of brick and mortar shops, leaving Jen with a series of difficult decisions to make. She decided to take Unicorn Feed & Supply entirely online after 12/24/23, and subsequently decided to close the doors to Stone & Spoon and The Gallery at Stone & Spoon this September.

Because the two shops and the gallery were so community-oriented, it was even harder to make the decision, but her wife, Duke, reminded her that she couldn’t continue to keep the shops open just for the community. She knew she was right, and that it was time to take care of her health (which was failing) and to begin to pay down the mountain of debt, which will be over $158k after selling her buildings, displays, etc.

Even now, Jen knows that the last six years was rich with relationships and community, and she will forever be grateful for that time.