New businesses opening throughout Benton

Submitted photo || Reel Southern, located on 12th Street in Benton across from Benton Hardware, will open its doors to the public Tuesday, Nov. 7. The store offers custom apparel, monogram services and more.

New businesses are springing up all over Benton.

Several new businesses have or are preparing to open doors within city limits. At the end of October, iWash – a new laundromat and dry cleaning facility opened to the public at 121 Commerce St., next to Snap Fitness in Benton. Open 24 hours a day, the laundromat offers state-of-the-art equipment with machines that accept cash, credit or debit cards, with a second location in Murray.

Still more are coming, however. Reel Southern, a boutique custom apparel shop that offers monogram services, gifts and more, will open its storefront Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 410 E. 12th St. in Benton, in the former Benton Health Care office across from Benton Hardware. Owner Amanda Robertson, who has previously filled orders for her monogram service and sold customized clothing such as hoodies, T-shirts, tanks, footwear and more exclusively online said she’d developed such a following she felt it was time to bring her inventory to a storefront.

Robertson said her main focus was to offer customers great selections at affordable prices and provide something for everyone.

“I’m most excited about running a business in the same place me and my husband both grew up in,” Robertson said. “We’re proud of our little hometown and excited to contribute to the economical growth of the community. We’ve always been local shippers and we are all about supporting small hometown business.”

Reel Southern will open be open for business from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday each week. Learn more on its Facebook page, here.

The Dollar Tree, which formerly operated a location in the city that closed in 2007, will open a new standalone location neighboring Walmart. That facility stands next to establishments opened within the last year in Benton: Little Caesar’s and, far more recently, Sweet CeCe’s. Dollar Tree representatives were unavailable for comment as of Wednesday afternoon.

Construction has commenced on a new Little General Convenience Store at 1507 Main St. in Benton, at the “Y” across from H.H. Lovett Park, next to Benton Drive-In. The roughly 4,000 square-foot convenience store owned by the Cox Oil and Maverick Inc., headquartered in Union City, Tenn., is expected to be completed in the spring. The company, according to its website, owns more than 40 locations across west Tennessee and Kentucky, with the nearest Little General located in Mayfield.

The new iWash laundry and dry cleaning facility opened at the end of October in Benton.

Downtown Benton will see new establishments in the coming weeks, as well, including a new health and wellness store at 1012 Main St., in the suite next to Puckett’s Jewelry and the former Kennedy’s Fan Shop. “The Whole You,” owned and operated by Marshall County resident and doTerra consultant Katie Singery, will offer massage therapy, which will include signature massages with specific essential oils, in addition to doTerra Touch inventory and a sensory deprivation – or float – tank. In addition to store front offerings, Singery said the center would also host essential oils class twice weekly, as well as yoga and Pilates after the first of the year.

Singery said she had hoped to open not just a store, but a wellness center.

“I love healing, (it’s) just my heart and passion,” Singery said. “… I had gotten really sick in 2012. My body would go into full paralysis; I couldn’t move or speak, it was awful and I would stay that way for several hours. I went to the emergency room 14 times, and they couldn’t tell me what was wrong with me. … I ended up having a car accident, and I broke my back and I shattered my ankle. That was in 2012 as well, when I first started having those issues. I had the issues, and then I had the car accident like a month later. In 2013 or 2014, someone introduced me to frankincense oil, and while I was having one of those attacks – is what I called them, when my body was would go into full paralysis – my husband put frankincense oil on the bottoms of my feet and a drop under my tongue like the woman told him to do. Within two minutes I was completely back to normal, and I’ve never had that happen to me since. … From then, I just started digging into health and healing and understanding the body and alkalization and everything. It’s just something that I like to share with others and help them reach that point.

“I’m just really excited to be able to – because I always have all these ideas and it’s hard to do them unless you have a place,” Singery said. “So I’m excited to get to meet many different people and help them just start their journey to healing.”

The Whole You has a target opening date of Dec. 1. Hours of operation will be 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, though Singery said massage therapy hours would be flexible depending on client needs. The center will also open on Saturdays, though set hours had not been established as of Wednesday.

Benton Mayor Rita Dotson said there were other businesses in the works in the downtown area that were not yet ready to announce intent. The new additions in town are a positive sign that Benton is growing, Dotson said, and she felt that the business owners were choosing the area because of the potential to flourish.

“I think they’re seeing Benton as a good avenue,” Dotson said. “It’s good, local hometown people and a good place to locate a business. We’re trying to be very business friendly as far as really working with them and trying to help them sort through their problems with building and locating somewhere. We’re trying to be on their side and help them as much as we can.”