It all started in 2013…

Centro Shoes was dreamed up by Eli and Patty Jones when the lack of a good shoe store in the Market Common shopping center in Myrtle Beach, SC seemed like a real problem. Where would people go to get quality, stylish footwear in a high-end shopping center to go with their outfits from the variety of clothing boutiques that were already in the Center?

Centro Shoes was founded to be that store. We wanted to create a shoe boutique that stocked amazing, stylish and comfortable footwear that wasn’t available everywhere else. We wanted to emphasize great service and a focused collection of shoes that we knew the public would love.

Our first location opened in March of 2014 on Howard Avenue, in a storefront vacated by a Fossil Watch store. Centro renovated the location to turn it into a quaint shoe store with a limited selection of Seychelles, BCBGeneration, Poetic License, along with other smaller boutique footwear lines. We were not at this location for very long.

In the summer of 2014 we had to move to our second location, on Reed Street. This location was not much bigger and had previously been the location of a candy store. We renovated that location, including lots of shelves on the walls and in the back room to make it functional as a shoe store.

We were able to build our small boutique business at this location and began to add some clothing to our collection of footwear as there were several lines that were not available elsewhere in the Myrtle Beach area.

Our first clothing line was Seven for all Mankind Jeans, and some clothing layering pieces to complement the shoes. There was demand for better clothing options than what was available in the other boutiques in the area. Our customers liked to be able to put together outfits in our store instead of having to bring in their clothing to our store to pair with the shoes.

This location wasn’t ideal for clothing as our only fitting room was the bathroom in the store, so when our lease was up we negotiated with the Market Common for a larger space in the shopping center. The Market Common has always been good to us and has supported us, a locally owned small boutique. We don’t know that many other landlords would have been as supportive of our efforts over the years.

It was more space than we wanted at the time, but we signed a new lease for a large space recently vacated by a rug store on the other end of Reed Street. In addition to the space, we liked the location since we were going to be between two existing clothing boutiques, across the street from some of the better stores in the shopping center, and surrounded by the great restaurants of the Market Common.

We moved into our current location on Reed Street in the fall of 2017 after some renovations of the existing space. We build partition walls to allow us to use only the front portion of the space while a large portion of the backroom space was not used. We were quite small and couldn’t possibly fill this new space.

Over the last few years we have held true to our roots as a shoe store by continuing to stock a wide variety of amazingly stylish and comfortable shoes from some of the best footwear brands around. We currently carry shoes from AS98, Miz Mooz, Bed Stu, Taos, All Black Footwear, Kork Ease, Chocolat Blu, Seychelles, Jeffrey Campbell, Sam Edelman, Gentle Souls by Kenneth Cole, Ilse Jacobsen, the Flexx, Pikolinos, Donald Pliner, Cloud Footwear BC Footwear, Vince Camuto, as well as others. We try to carry a good representation of these lines during all seasons of the year.

As our initial clothing selections proved to be quite popular with our customers, we continued to expand our clothing offerings. We now offer a wide selection of amazing styles from the following clothing lines: Johnny Was, Hale Bob, Tolani, Liverpool LA, Gentle Fawn, Michael Stars, Sanctuary, Love Token, Ivy Jane, Uncle Frank, Sister Mary, Stitch and Needle, Magnolia Pearl, as well as others. As many people exclaim when they enter our Reed Street store: “I can’t believe how many clothes there are, I thought this was a shoe store!” And it does appear that our clothing racks have taken over the store. But we do maintain a large selection of unique shoes that complement the clothes that we carry.

In addition to shoes and clothes, we also carry a wide variety of leather handbags from Bed Stu and Hobo. The handbags can be found throughout our store on the shelves, and on some of the outfits we think the handbags go with. If you are in the area and are in need of a quality leather handbag in almost any size, please stop in a check out our great selection.

We love being the best women’s shoe and clothing boutique on the Grand Strand. We think we are the best women’t shoe and clothing boutique anywhere and love all the great customers we get from around the world. People from all over the country look forward to going to Centro Shoes when they visit the Myrtle Beach area. We also have lots of customers who make the short drive from Florence, Columbia, Charleston, Mount Pleasant and other areas in and around South Carolina. Being on the coast and near the border with North Carolina brings us lots of great customers from the ‘other’ Carolina including the wonderful people of Charlotte, Raleigh, Wilmington, Greensboro, Southport, and all along the coast of North Carolina.

Obviously we serve everyone along the very long Grand Strand area. From Georgetown on the south, including Pawleys Island and Litchfield Beach, as well as Murrels Inlet and Surfside Beach, our local and visiting south end customers love coming to our Myrtle Beach location. The north end of the Grand Strand also makes the short drive down Hwy 31 to Centro, including lots of customers from Little River, North Myrtle Beach, Briarcliffe Acres, the Dunes Club area and all along the north end of the City of Myrtle Beach. With Highway 31 connecting the north and south ends of the Grand Strand, it makes almost everywhere on the north end only a 20 minute drive to get to Centro Shoes.

And we love our inland Grand Strand customers. Lots of stylish women visit us from Conway, Marion, Dillon, and other great areas of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, as well as locally areas like Socastee, Forestbrook and Carolina Forest all love to come to Centro Shoes for their next great pair of shoes or stylish outfit.

We love our customers who visit our store from all over, all their locations are too numerous to list as Myrtle Beach is a great tourist destination for people from everywhere. And we can’t say thank you enough to everyone who finds us on the internet and supports us that way. We love bringing you all these great styles and helping you look and feel your best. We can’t wait to see you again!