Kingdom, a store combining K-pop, romance books, and baked goods, has opened in Clemmons, N.C., the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
Located at 6000 Meadowbrook Mall Court, Suite 1, Kingdom carries some 3,900 K-pop items, including CDs, DVDs, posters, photo books, and merch, along with a selection of hundreds of romance novels separated by subgenre. The bakery side of the business, meanwhile, offers cookies, brownies, milk bread buns, chocolate-covered pretzels, and more.
The store is owned and operated by Deidre Williams, her daughters Kaitlyn Williams and Haelee Williams, and family friend Morgan Dial. Deidre Williams, who worked for more than 20 years as a baker and cake decorator at grocery store Harris Teeter, told the Journal that Dial, one of her employees at Harris Teeter, became friends with Kaitlyn through their shared love of K-pop.
They all began going to concerts together, and "it was something we all loved for a long, long time, but felt frustrated because every time we wanted to go to a physical location we had to drive to Raleigh, Durham, Cary, or to Charlotte," Williams explained. While attending a K-pop concert about two years ago, they had the idea to open a space of their own.
Kaitlyn Williams noted that she also had the same frustration with romance novels: "There are a lot of people who want to go into a store, physically pick up a book and buy it. So we were like, 'hey, let's try to offer those titles in person.'"
The store also has a community room, which the owners plan to use for things like cake-decorating classes.