LAKEWOOD – Brendan Halbohm, owner and proprietor of All American Maker, which was recently located at the Chautauqua Mall, is moving his operations back into a Jamestown location.

“I just can’t justify the cost,” he said regarding renting mall space. “Most of my business is done online, or at specialty shops and fairs. Plus the cost of everything is going up.”

It wasn’t long ago Halbohm set up shop at the Chautauqua Mall, with the hopes of selling more products locally by being in a centralized location with plenty of parking. However, things didn’t go exactly as he hoped.

“This is not entirely the mall’s fault,” said Halbohm. “I encourage people to shop locally whenever they can. The money spent locally tends to stay locally. However, people around here tend to have a bad attitude when it comes to the mall. I hear it all the time ‘the mall is dead’, there’s nothing to do there.”

Halbohm explained that this bad attitude perpetuates the problem.

“When people just hear how bad the mall is, then they don’t shop or visit the mall – it’s not a good recipe for success,” he said.

A majority of Halbohm’s sales have come online – a statistic that has grown over the past several months.

“My online sales now account for closer to 90 to 95 percent of my sales,” he said. “Online is a huge part of business now, even for local ‘mom and pop’ shops.”