Artisans & agency — Local services in Santa Cruz

The store is neat and clean. The staff is friendly. It has cool artsy stuff but they are kind of pricy. My experience here was weird and uncomfortable though.

I went to return some stuff my husband bought me. The lady (not sure if she's the owner) told me she could put the credits on a gift card. I decided to look around first to see if there was anything grabbing me. After a while, the lady pointed me to some jewelry on sale. There was a small section that all jewelry marked 40% off. After looking through, I chose a necklace which was tagged $35 in original bar code. However, when she took the necklace, she said "Oh no, this necklace is $72 and the discounted price is $35."

I hesitated a bit and thought that was strange. All other jewelry in that section have original tags from the manufacture. If what she said was true, then a $200 necklace on sale there would be $500 originally. It totally doesn't make sense as it's just a silver necklace. As I was paying, I asked her if all the jewelry there were marked in their original prices. She gave me a really vague and indirect answer "Oh no, sometimes the staff forget to change the prices in the system".

So she charged me $35 for the necklace as tagged. My instinct told me she fooled me and she didn't give me the discount at all. The math didn't work either. The weirdest thing was she removed the original tag from the necklace. I didn't notice until I got back home. Why did she remove the tag???

This bad experience put weird and ill feelings to me about this store.. I believe the lady regretted to put the necklace in the on sale section once I decided to buy and she didn't want to honor the discounted price. Is it really worth it to lose a customer and the store's reputation for $15 though???

I cannot trust and recommend this...

Very cute place with some very cool local artwork very conveniently located downtown with easy parking. Unfortunately due to the emergency exit being locked during business hours I cannot recommend this place due to safety reasons. Even when I brought this up to the staff they kind of just laughed and didn't do anything about it. Very insulting to myself The customers and the overall safety of workers and everyone else inside. It wasn't even close to closing time and the store was fully staffed with two employees so there was absolutely no reason to lock the back door. There is also a sign above the door That says this door is to remain unlocked during business hours. And because there is no push style door handle during an emergency it would be impossible to open the door. Very unsafe...

I was last in this store the last Saturday, 7/27/2024. I love shopping in this store when I come to Santa Cruz which is rare. The store is very nice, and clean. However, while there I purchased the Douglas Sweets chocolate chip cookies, and gave them as a gift. Today I was shown the cookies had expired 4/29/2024. I was disgusted to find this store is selling food items that are THREE MONTHS PAST THE EXPIRATION DATE. I really can't believe the people running this store are not checking dates, and selling unedible food at full price. I now have a completely different view of this store, and may not be doing business...