 Good afternoon. My name is Sergio Aparichio. I work for the Office of Economic Development from the city of Columbia. And today is business week, so we are here to celebrate all businesses in general that we have in our lovely city of Columbia, businesses and entrepreneurs. So we have on the city and the Five Pounds Association. We would like to welcome Botanica, which is a new business here in our city. And Five Pounds is thriving. In the recent months, we have Jackson Brown, Swift, Game Day, Furato, and now Wayne Pankie with Botanica. And now I'd like to introduce our mayor, Rickerman, to say a couple words and welcome our new business here in the Five Pounds district. Mayor? Thank you. Exciting to be at another opening in Columbia, South Carolina, but more exciting is that we're continuing to build a community with diverse businesses all the way around. And we had to celebrate the Bento business. We were out on Main Street supporting Willie's Grocery, Uncle Willie's Grocery Store and other community. Now we have Botanica here, which is, I just went inside folks and we have an opportunity to see what they brought. They brought artists from all over and it's a mix of Afro-Caribbean and Latinx artists with its clothing, its candles, its shoes, its hats. It's just, it's a really, I'm excited for y'all of y'all to go inside and take a look at this. This is just another great way of bringing diversity to our community. I'm very excited about them making an investment here and can't thank you enough for picking our community to invest in and excited to support you. So with that, I'm going to let you steal the show. All right. Thank you. Yes, sir. Good afternoon, everyone. I want to give thanks to the Mayor, Five Points Association. Katie, she couldn't be here today. And the whole Five Points family of merchants really made us feel like family here and I can't thank them all enough. Last but not least, my amazing store manager job. Running a business has been definitely been a challenge, more of a challenge than building it. As all business owners know, as I am learning, we really need to write people to help operate and grow your business and I'm very thankful for her. A little bit how I got to Five Points. This was the first shopping area, believe it or not, that I became acquainted with upon my arrival in the South Carolina about 10 years ago. The very first, the gourmet shop, actually. I was at work looking for food, found the gourmet shop, came down and experienced this area. And I'm like, wow, this is a really cool spot. It was a unique vibe to it, unlike anywhere else I've been. And a little did I know at that time that I would have a shop here on my very own 10 years later. It's kind of funny how that worked out. I feel a unique vibe here would have been perfect for the funky and eclectic boutique that is Botanica Santini. And what it does here or what we've done here is we brought together our loves of art, fashion and music under one roof. So we've got albums, we've got vinyl record players so you can check it out, clothing, lots of artists from around the world have, we've got pieces from them here, shirts, hats, wearable art, essentially. And all brought together under one roof. Some of the merchandise contains wording en español, but the universal themes of life and love apply. We're incredibly happy to have this area as our business home and we look forward to being a part of the continued growth and success of Columbia and the Village of Five Points. Thank you. Steve Cook with the Five Points Association. Katie couldn't be here today. So I'm kind of pinching and hitting. So we had an opportunity to meet at the meeting a couple of weeks ago and I just, the reason why Five Points is so great is because exactly what's we're in front of is businesses like this that are, you know, where else in Columbia do you find this kind of thing? We're real proud to have them in the neighborhood and just it's, I couldn't imagine a more perfect fit. And so, you know, I'm, I'm all, I would say I'm getting tired of going to these brand new business openings, but you're never tired of that. So we're real excited to have you guys in the neighborhood and you know, can't wait to add you guys in the mix. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. If I could, I'd like to present the mayor with his very own votive. That's pretty classy. Thank you very much.