After 40 years, beloved Capitola store closes its doors for the last time

A beloved business in Capitola will close its doors for good Tuesday afternoon after 40 years.

“It’s a real emotional time for me,” said Sheryl Guidera, owner of Kaleidoscope.

At 5:30 p.m., she will end an era, saying goodbye to a community she loves.

Throughout the day, visitors came to shower Guidera with balloons, flowers and hugs on the parent-teacher store’s last day of business.

After decades in business, Guidera’s customers say they never would have imagined seeing the store’s racks empty.

But the owner says her business is a casualty of the growth in online shopping. Consumers would rather shop on websites like Amazon.com than in a brick-and-mortar store, she says.

She was looking for a buyer for the business, but was unable to find one, so now it’s time to close the doors.

“We put up a little flier that they were closing (at school) and we have student whose parents are teachers who went ‘what?”” said preschool director Laveta Lipscomb. “It was like losing a family member, so it was really sad.”

For four decades, Kaleidoscope has sold the teaching community books, toys, and other classroom tools to help students of all ages.

That’s why teachers like Terry Cleary have been frequent customers.

“To be able to come in and look at what’s available through it and handle it and see if it’s going to work for their children has been such a blessing,” said Cleary, an education specialist.

But now this chapter is closing, and with it, a business — customers say it feel like an old friend leaving.

“We have really connected,” Guidera says of her customers. “It’s kind of cute. This one boy said ‘you can’t go, you can’t go!'”