Downtown legend Paper Bear to close doors after temporary reprieve

Last November, nearly a year ago, Carol Powers made the difficult decision to close the doors of her beloved gift shop, Paper Bear. The weighty work of shutting down began as Powers, her husband David, and long-time employee, Cathy Natal, took stock of their inventory and made plans for a slow, meaningful exit from their retail space on the Square.

Then, as they planned a Going Out of Business event to commemorate their 41 years in San Marcos, the coronavirus hit, pushing downtown shops into quarantine.

Powers credits Dia, the Paper Bear shop cat, for keeping the store alive in the long months of shutdown. “Cathy came in every day to visit her,” Powers said. “The store’s just been sitting here. The candy got old. We pretty much had to throw all the coffee away. We all had to wait.”

During that time, while the world seemed to grind to a halt, Powers continued to offer partial-pay to her part-time employees. Gradually, though, much of her workforce — many are college students — made the decision to seek alternative employment or take the opportunity to travel. Powers is seeking temporary employees to help Paper Bear phase through the close out.

Paper Bear temporarily reopened as the quarantine restrictions for small businesses lifted. Powers and company have resumed plans for gradually closing the store, a process that will understandably take some time. The store’s shelves still brim with the trademark eclectic mix of beads, clothing, greeting cards, toys, candles, novelty items, posters and games.

“Every week we’ll be marking stuff down more,” Powers said. “Some of it’s new, too, so we’ll mark that down later, but we’re hoping to have it done by the end of November.”

In an effort to keep her staff and shoppers safe and healthy, Powers instituted COVID-19 protocols, limiting the number of people in the store at one time and ensuring that everyone wears masks and sanitizes their hands upon entry.

News of Paper Bear’s temporary reprieve spread quickly among hardcore fans of the store. Customers from all over have come in search of unique beads, gifts and jewelry, and to have that Paper Bear experience one last time.

Elissa Stewart and her son, Ian, made their annual pilgrimage to Paper Bear from San Antonio for Ian’s birthday.

“He collects old yoyos,” Stewart explained as she perused trays of polished gemstones to add to her bead collection. “They used to have old dunking ones here. A few years, we’d come here for his birthday. We’d have lunch at the Root Cellar, and then sit out on the courthouse lawn to play with his new yoyo. Now we come for the beads, so when we heard about the shop’s closing, we decided to come here one last time.”

Brooke Stephenson, a native of Marble Falls who will graduate from Texas State this year with a degree in International Studies, had similar remembrances of Paper Bear. “I liked that there was a cute, local store to go buy unique greeting cards from instead of just going to Walmart or another large chain store. They had any sort of item you'd be looking for because they kind of sold everything. If I wanted a rare item for a gift or a project, I was sure I could find it at Paper Bear.”

For Stephenson, it wasn’t only the items in the store, but the experience of shopping there that made Paper Bear so memorable. “It was always a fun place to take friends to and spend an afternoon browsing around in,” she said.

This response has been far from uncommon, but to Powers, it has yet to fully sink in.

“When we first announced that we were closing, I was flabbergasted by the response we got from people,” she said. “One lady who came in told me that back when they had the fires in Bastrop, she ran into her house to grab all her Paper Bear jewelry.”

Powers, who opened Heartworks Co. on the Square back in 1978, originally intended the store to be a jewelry shop. Heartworks quickly outgrew its original space, morphing into the “Texas-sized gift shop” of present day. Powers, along with Natal, who started working for Paper Bear in 1985, struggled with the business aspects of running the store until Power's husband came on board.

“David keeps me grounded,” she said. “Before him, we had all our bookkeeping in garbage bags. We didn’t even have a filing cabinet.”

“We had one filing cabinet,” Natal chimed in.

“He put us on a computer,” Powers went on, smiling. “He filed all our stuff for us.” Afterward, they hired a lawyer and an accountant to help guide the process of the store’s growth.

Powers attributes much of that growth to her customers, who were as instrumental in the direction of the store as she was. This is how Paper Bear became stocked with giant metal lawn turtles, rubber chickens, Chinese paper lanterns, locally-made soap and potpourri, quirky socks and funny magnets, imported purses, hand puppets, painted masks and card games.

“The store sort of evolved. Customers kind of put it together in a way,” Powers said. “We always tried to bring in things people wouldn’t see normally.”

As an art major at the University of Texas, Powers has always had an interest in making jewelry, a direction in which she will likely continue once Paper Bear is closed.

“My husband wants to travel,” she said. “So I may not have a storefront for a while.”

But Powers expressed some ambivalence at the idea of closing her store. Sitting next to her bead bar, surrounded by customers who greet her and ask her questions, she explained, “I love retail. I think it’s hereditary. I think that and gardening, it’s in my genes.” Wistfully, she pulled Dia the shop cat into her lap. “Somehow or other, I’ll figure something out.”

For everyone who has enjoyed Paper Bear, now is the time to stop in for a visit, to give Dia the shop cat a scrub between the ears, to find that perfect one-of-a-kind gift, and to say goodbye to a place that helped to define the heart of San Marcos for the last 42 years.