The Collective Boutiques Is Taking Over the Former Painted Tree Space in Highland Village

If you were one of the small-business owners who got the letter on April 14 — the one that said pack your stuff up and be out within eight hours — you've had a rough two months. Now there's a next chapter.

The Collective Boutiques will be the new anchor at Highland Village Town Center, in the same space Painted Tree previously occupied. Same building on Justin Road. New name on the door. And a different operating model.

Here's what happened in April, for anyone who missed it: Painted Tree Boutiques, a retail chain that housed hundreds of independent vendors under one roof across more than 60 locations nationwide, abruptly ceased all operations on April 14, leaving thousands of small-business owners with little warning and no clear explanation. Locations across the country were affected as the company sent vendors a letter giving them an eight-hour window to come to the store and retrieve their inventory. The chain closed so suddenly that the Highland Village location had posted on social media the day before about a Ladies Night Out it planned to host that Thursday.

Painted Tree cited rising costs, shifting market conditions, and changes in consumer shopping behavior. Cold comfort if you'd just restocked your booth.

The Collective's pitch is direct about where it came from. "The name was chosen intentionally, as it reflects the shop owners and small businesses we are proud to be offering homes to following the abrupt closing of The Painted Tree," the company posted on social media.

The terms are worth understanding if you're a vendor weighing whether to sign up. The Collective says it provides the space, staff, point of sale, and marketing for boutique shop owners, and charges a flat 10% commission on all shop sales, collected at the end of the month. To get in, a shop owner puts down one month's rent plus a 50% deposit, which is held and refunded within 30 days after a shop moves out. Shop owners receive a monthly statement with details covering gross sales, commission, rent, and net payout.

For shoppers, the practical upshot is simpler: the indie, curated-goods experience you drove to that Highland Village strip center for is coming back. Whether it's the same vendors is the open question. Some may have found other homes in the two months since April. Some may be waiting to see how The Collective's terms land.

That's the real thing to watch. The Collective describes itself as bringing "independent shop owners together under one professionally managed roof." Whether vendors who got burned once are ready to trust that arrangement again, in the exact same building under a new name, will determine whether this stabilizes or becomes another chapter in the same story.

The model — low fixed cost, commission-based, professionally managed — is a logical response to what just went wrong. But Painted Tree ran a commission model too. The difference, presumably, is in the margins, the management, and whether this business is built to last in a strip center in 2026. The vendor roster, once it takes shape, will tell us a lot.