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August 3, 2020



Mobile plant shop The Cactus Club opens a brick-and-mortar location at The RailYard South End.

by Caroline Portillo

If you don’t think a potted cactus can be a chic, statement-worthy piece of decor, it’s time you visited the new brick-and-mortar location of The Cactus Club at The RailYard South End. 

Co-founded by Ivy Mak and Anna Thomas, The Cactus Club specializes in cacti, indoor foliage and rare aroids, all of which are sourced from family-owned growers and presented in a modern array of terra cotta pots. Most range in price from $4 to $60, though some of the rarer items sell for as much as $200. 

Mak, a native of Hong Kong, began her plant journey while working in retail at Anthropologie. “We’d get to go buy plants monthly, and I just fell in love with going to nurseries, wanting one of my own one day,” Mak says. 

The partners met through mutual friends but got to know each other while working together at uptown bar and restaurant Draught in 2016. Mak had the love of plants, while Thomas, a lifelong North Carolinian who comes from a family of small business owners, had an entrepreneurial spirit. So in early 2017, they launched The Cactus Club, a mobile plant shop. 

The duo’s signature green Cactus Bus allowed them to travel throughout Charlotte, “selling our plant babies to the community,” Mak says. Now, with a brick-and-mortar location in one of the RailYard’s micro-retail units, they have room to expand and continue to build their brand, which already has a thriving e-commerce business and nearly 9,000 Instagram followers. 

“Since it’s a micro-retail location, it is small,” Thomas says. “However, you should still plan on being overwhelmed by a lush, beautiful and urban jungle in the center of Charlotte.” itsthecactusclub.com   SP

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