Downtown Raleigh store to close at year’s end. Is it really gone for good?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Unlikely Professionals will close in downtown Raleigh at the end of 2025.
- Its North Hills shop will stay open and is “thriving,” the store owner reported.
- Unlikely Professionals is a sister brand to Edge of Urge, which has a Raleigh location.
When Unlikely Professionals announced that it was expanding to a second location in North Hills, it didn’t plan to close its store in downtown Raleigh.
“Not to worry! Our current shop at 212 E Franklin St will remain open as usual ...” the shop wrote in an April Instagram post.
But plans have changed, and Unlikely Professionals will be closing its store at 212 E. Franklin St. at the end of the year, Unlikely Professionals owner Derek Keller told The News & Observer in an email.
“We have valued and appreciated our time at this longtime location and will continue to be open through the holiday season until the end of the year,” Keller said in the email.
Keller cited “challenges and issues with the building” as reasons for the closure, declining to be more specific about the problems. The landlord of the property could not be immediately reached by The N&O.
But the closure of the downtown store will not mark the end for Unlikely Professionals. Shoppers can still purchase items including men’s apparel and accessories from the store’s website or visit its location at 540 St. Albans Drive at the North Hills Innovation District. That location has been open since the summer and is “thriving,” Keller wrote.
“Surrounded by like-minded local businesses and community partners, it is a natural home for us,” Keller wrote.
Unlikely Professionals is located in the Makers Alley area of the North Hills Innovation District, where retailers operate in relatively smaller footprints. Besides Unlikely Professionals, Makers Alley is home to concepts including Bofemme, Green Rabbit Plants and Ky’s Kandles.
At North Hills, Unlikely Professionals is very close to the forthcoming Standard Beer + Food — just as its downtown store is across from the popular restaurant’s Franklin Street location.
What is Unlikely Professionals?
Unlikely Professionals opened in 2019 as a sister brand to Edge of Urge, an apparel, decor and gift store established in Wilmington in 2002 by Keller’s partner, Jessie Williams.
“Edge of Urge’s men’s offerings were bursting at the seams,” the company writes on its website. “We had so many requests for more, more, MORE just for men and even more of that vintage, motorcycle, Americana, utilitarian vibe.”
That’s what led Keller and Williams, to create Unlikely Professionals — a retail store complete with a beer and wine bar, accessible via a garage door. They opened the store across from the Raleigh Edge of Urge location, which debuted in 2014.
Both the Raleigh and Wilmington Edge of Urge stores remain open.
