Mermaid Cove, a clothing boutique specializing in nautical-style apparel, décor and jewelry, opened its first Wilmington store last week.

The store is in unit 105 at 1437 Military Cutoff Road next to P.T.’s Olde Fashioned Grille. The boutique is at the former location of Elle, a women’s clothing boutique that opened in 2016.

The Wilmington location is the fifth Mermaid Cove store owned by Stephanie and Allen Massengill.

Other locations are in Southport, Bolivia, Ocean Isle Beach and Oak Island. The Ocean Isle location opened at 1564 Marketplace Blvd. in June. The first Mermaid Cove store opened in 2012.

Stephanie Massengill said they decided to open in Wilmington because of customer demand.

“We have had several of our customers ask us to come to Wilmington, we were shipping a lot of our items to Wilmington,” Stephanie Massengill said.

She decided to open at the Progress Point shopping center because the available space came at the right time.

“We had been looking -- that kind of fell into our lap,” she said. ”The broker called us and said another store wanted to move out, so it was a perfect location and there is a lot of traffic.”

Stephanie Massengill said one of the things that customers can look forward to in the new location includes good customer service, pointing out that the store has won many awards for customer service.

She also plans on continuing many features of what makes up the Mermaid Cove brand.
“I’m known for our prices and 90 percent of the clothes we sell are made in the U.S.,” she said.