NATCHEZ — Being able to buy a shirt isn’t enough.

Buying a shirt you want is part of the experience.

That was an experience Flora native Kel Richardson found lacking when he moved to Natchez for an insurance job two years ago.

“When I moved here, I would ask, ‘Where do the guys shop here?’” he said. “I would still have to go to Baton Rouge or Jackson when I needed to buy clothes.”

Richardson’s experience is one a number of new downtown Natchez merchants have cited for themselves when opening various boutique and lifestyle stores, and now he’s following in their steps and opening The Mill, a men’s clothing store at 107 N. Pearl St.

“After making friends here and talking to the guys, they said they needed to have a men’s store here,” Richardson said.

By the time he decided to open The Mill, Richardson had left his insurance job and been working as a clothing salesman at a department store, where his job included helping men mix and match outfits when they weren’t sure what to choose.

That’s helped inform what he picks out at market, choosing a selection of men’s casual and business casual clothing that you aren’t going to find anywhere else in Natchez, Richardson said.

“I choose based on what I would wear and by looking at the guys — the young guys — and what they want, choosing things people say they wanted or needed,” he said.

“I asked around to my guy friends, ‘What would you want to see in a guy’s store?’

“I had so many guys coming in (at the department store), they would be standing there, looking for something and you could see on their face, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ After seeing that, I decided Natchez needs help, a men’s store.”

Richardson’s business partner Doug Wimberly said he wanted to invest in the business because of Richardson’s customer service and fashion sensibilities.

“I saw how he was able to interact with people, to pull together an outfit for them, and I saw that this store was something he could do,” Wimberly said.

As the store expands, it will include items such as socks, ties, wallets, slacks, T-shirts, shorts, custom-order jackets and men’s shoes, Richardson said.

The space it’s currently located in is small, but that’s in part to help move inventory and ensure that shoppers at The Mill aren’t buying clothes that will saturate the market.

“Things are going to rotate through here pretty quickly,” Ricardson said. “I don’t want, if you buy a shirt here, to show up at a gathering with your friends and you look and two other people are wearing the same shirt you are.”

The name of the business was inspired by a look at Natchez’s past.

“Doug and I had a whole list of possible names, and one evening we started talking about the paper mill, and went from there with the idea of a cotton mill or a clothing mill,” Richardson said.

The downtown location was chosen because Richardson wanted to be a part of what he saw as a growing vibrancy in the downtown shopping district.

“I wanted to be part of a community, where people can walk and see what is going on, and when they shop downtown they know they are getting something they want.”

For more information, call 769-355-2008 or visit themillnatchez.com.