COEUR d'ALENE - Shelene Johnson Weholt and Shanda Johnson are going to miss working for their mom.

Marge Johnson, 74, of Hayden Lake, opened Centre Beauty Supply in 1985, and after 28 years, the store is closing.

"I've worked here more than half my life, literally," Shelene said. "I was 27 when I started."

Shelene, 55, of Coeur d'Alene, has been there since the beginning, and remembers bringing her mom a "best boss" mug that first day. Shanda, 54, of Rathdrum, joined her mom and sister about four years after the store opened.

"I always used to come in and say, 'Hello, store,'" Shanda said. "I haven't done that in a few years though."

The neon "public welcome" and "Centre Beauty Supply" signs in the store's window at 4055 Government Way are a familiar sight. So are the mannequin heads that sport cool shades and 'dos. Come mid-September, the signs will be turned off forever and the heads will have to find new homes.

"I think the hardest part of closing this store is telling our customers and we feel like we are abandoning them, truly," Shelene said.

"We feel guilty," Marge said.

The ladies said they feel like many of their customers are their friends, and it's important they know how much they have appreciated them through the years.

Dianne Stark, 64, and Mirriam Hill, 86, both of Hayden, are two long-time customers. They stopped in last Thursday and heard the news.

"I'm surprised," Stark said. "They are the most helpful and cordial and friendly and nice people."

Stark said she had been coming in for at least 20 years.

"And they had a cute dog," she added.

A customer favorite, Alice the Chinese pug was the "official greeter" in the store for eight years. She was present Thursday, and Stark and Hill were delighted to see her because she hadn't been in for a while.

"People would come in to see her," Shelene said. "They'd bring their family and friends in just to visit Alice."

The family shares many memories of working together all these years, many good and some bad. Like the time the keepers of the Budweiser Clydesdales were in town for the Fourth of July parade and needed bleach for the horses' fetlocks.

"They invited Shanda and me to go over and watch," Shelene said. "We went after we closed."

Or when their longtime hairdresser and friend Vonette Larsen was killed in a road rage incident on New Year's Eve in 2006.

"She was like a daughter," Marge said.

They always have champagne in the store for New Year's, and New Year's Day they also had to come in to call Larsen's clients.

"They cried on the phone," Marge said. "It was pretty sad, and we were crying too."

When the store first opened, it was one of the only places in the Coeur d'Alene area where clients could find salon-quality products without actually getting work done, but the store has always had an on-site salon.

A large part of Marge's inspiration for opening the store was not just to sell the products, but to assist people on how to correctly use them. She would demonstrate how to use tools on one of the mannequin heads.

"The hairdressers were mad when we opened to the public," Marge said. "As a hairdresser, I didn't really want my clients out there buying things because it was competition, but as time went on and I was in the industry a long time, I felt that probably they did need some help because they were going to drug stores and having awful things happen to their hair."

A licensed cosmetologist with more than 40 years experience, Marge now feels it's time to walk away from the business. She is ready for retirement and Shanda is moving to Montana, plus new economic pressures such as the Internet, diversion and competition have sent Centre Beauty Supply on the road to closure.

"We would have made an effort to really find somebody else to replace (Shanda), if the economy would have been good," Marge said. "But I tell you, the economy has not been good and we just decided to pack it up."