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With a name like “ The Man Cave, ” a Connecticut store may not sound like a place that caters to women. But for store owner Ericka Whalen, the irony is that women make up a large part of both her clientele. Whalen opened The Man Cave in 2018 in downtown Middletown’s Main Street Market to sell unique gifts for men.

The gift shop, which sells everything from collector knives to funny socks, quickly became popular as a destination for those looking to give the men in their life something unique. “When we first started The Man Cave it was owned by me and ran by an all-women staff,” Whalen said with a chuckle. “As much as we were going in the direction towards men, we found a lot of our stuff to be unisex.



About 80% of our customer base was women and many of them were coming in looking for gifts for their dads, husbands and boyfriends. But many of them would also say they were buying things for themselves,” Whalen said. So Whalen decided to expand her gift offerings for both men and women.

Her newest enterprise is The Man Cave & She Shed Too! , at 390 Main St. in Middletown. The new space is almost four times the size of Whalen’s previous location inside Main Street Market and offers hundreds of gifts and collectibles for both genders, she said.

“When you come into the store, it’s not divided into The Man Cave or She Shed Too. It’s all intermingled,” Whalen said. “I did that on purpose because I want couples to shop together.

I want friends to shop togeth.

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