The opening at 9th Avenue and Irving Street marks the beginning of the local gift shop chain's Westside expansion.
Therapy Stores opened its third San Francisco location in the Inner Sunset in March 2026. Photo by Junyao Yang on March 16, 2026., a local chain of gift shops selling everything from BAGGU totes to golden-doodle-shaped hair clips, opened its third San Francisco location in the Inner Sunset last weekend.
The opening marked the end of a dream held by some residents that the storefront at 724 Irving St. on 9th Avenue — which had been a hardware store from 1948 through 2023, when it was damaged by a fire — would reopen as one. Despite help from the city and a GoFundMe campaign, the hardware store’s owners confirmed last year that they would not reopen,. Their reasons were many: Progress Hardware lost its business and liability insurance coverage due to the fire, and couldn’t come to an agreement on a new lease with the current landlord. With tariffs, prices to restock their inventory had also gone up. Angie Petitt of the Inner Sunset Merchant Association reached out to other hardware stores to see if anyone would be interested, including Great Wall Hardware on Taraval and Sunset Hardware on Noriega — but none had the capacity to expand their businesses. Petitt was even tempted to do it herself, she said, but decided against it. Opening a hardware store requires a lot, Petitt said, and she didn’t have previous experience owning one. “You have to invest a lot of inventory. You need different types of little things. It’s very specific when it comes to tools,” she said. “And it’s difficult to compete with Amazon and online stores.” It seems as if Therapy opened overnight. It filed business registration on March 2, and less than two weeks later, the lights turned on and the doors were open. On a recent Saturday afternoon, the once-vacant storefront was filled with customers roaming the store among the plushies, claw clips, notebooks, mugs and baby clothes.Opening the Inner Sunset location was fairly “easy” and took about “a month or two,” given that the space was nicely set up and has an open floorplan, said Avery James, an employee at Therapy Stores.Therapy opened its first location in 1994 on Valencia Street and 16th Street, and expanded to Bernal Heights in 2022. Now, it is on a mission to expand to the Westside. “We try to keep to our San Francisco area, considering this is its first location,” James said on Monday at Therapy Stores on Valencia Street. “We have here and Bernal, so it makes sense to spread.” Petitt, though disappointed that no hardware store is taking the place of Progress, is glad to see a retail business open in the neighborhood instead of another restaurant. “More retail is good. If we get more people coming to the neighborhood for retail, they would inevitably wander around,” she said. “We can sort of help each other in that way, by being here and being good neighbors.” , Saint Frank Coffee, Super Duper and Caché moved into the neighborhood, some drawing long lines on the weekends. Meanwhile, businesses that provide necessities to residents — such as the hardware store and an independent pharmacy on 9th and Irving — have closed. “We don’t have a choice if it’s gonna be a hardware store,” Petitt said. “I hope one will come, some day in some way. We can dream, but somebody’s gotta do it.” Because of you, Mission Local reached and surpassed our $300,000 year-end fundraising goal.Thank you for choosing to invest in a local newsroom rooted in San Francisco’s communities — one that listens first and reports deeply. Your contribution today helps sustain the reporting our city relies on all year long.junyao@missionlocal.com, after receiving her Master’s degree from UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Junyao lives in the Inner Sunset. You can find her skating at Golden Gate Park or getting a scoop at Hometown Creamery. Please keep your comments short and civil. Do not leave multiple comments under multiple names on one article. We will zap comments that fail to adhere to these short and easy-to-follow rules.Sign up for Mission Local's daily newsletter: The latest San Francisco news in your inbox, no more than once a day, for free.
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