Summer 2006

Gifts Ahoy! By Kristine Hansen

“My store is not a ‘big box,'” says Sylvia Killion, owner of Sylvia’s By The Sea in Scituate Harbor, MA, stating the obvious to anyone who has walked through her gift shop’s front door. In fact, Sylvia’s By The Sea could be considered “the anti-big box,” where locals and vacationers regularly drop in to browse and to buy and be captivated by the local charm the shop exudes from every nook.

Sylvia’s is delightfully merchandised in a series of engaging “little vignettes” that capture the feeling of living in this quaint Massachusetts seaside town. One room in the 4,000-square-foot store, which occupies the ground floor of a brick building, is devoted to all things ocean, from baby’s sailor-themed christening gowns to bins of starfish and conch shells to nautical-themed dinnerware. Around another corner is a lovely display of what Killion calls “girly-girl items,” such as nighties, lotions and creams, candles, flip flops, hats, linens and jewelry. Yet another vignette offers baby-related gifts, including storybooks, plush animals and photo albums to preserve precious beachside memories.

Sylvia’s also has a section for stationery, one of Killion’s “passions,” with Kate Spade, Vera Wang and Crane lines mixed in with inexpensive, fun papers and envelopes that might appeal to bargain-hunting shoppers. Also stocked in this section are beautiful gift books and wedding invitations.

Elsewhere there are displays for men’s products (colognes, deodorants and gift sets), Christmas decor (wreaths, ornaments, angels and nativity scenes), home decor accents (drawer pulls, picture frames, and signs with whimsical sayings), as well as Red Hat Society merchandise (red hats, of course, and scarves, jewelry, books and more). At every turn, customers are presented with another grouping of unique gifts, some upscale, some inexpensive—all designed to delight the senses. All with varying price points designed to give every shopper something to home in on.

Keeping the shop uniquely decorated and focusing on the details is Killion’s key to attracting both new and return customers. Fortunately, she’s got a trained visual eye. As a painter of furniture and glass, she has an artist’s eye and knows intuitively what customers consider delightfully quaint, verses decidedly trite.

Anchors aweigh

That intuition served her well during the launch of a souvenir T-shirt business, Townie Line, Inc., two years ago. Killion started the Townie line with the sole purpose of carrying imprinted T-shirts with “townie” on the front in big type, with Scituate, MA in small letters above. She thought the shirts would be a unique item that would appeal to local customers and maybe even visitors who wanted to feel connected to the place they had visited and perhaps fallen in love with.

When the line took off, Killion sensed an opportunity and soon began adding other towns to the Townie lineup, garnering customers from near and far. According to Killion, the biggest challenge running the new line has been educating people about what the term townie means: someone who is completely involved in and loves the community in which they live. As it turns out, shoppers of all kinds instantly identified with the term, and now the line has expanded to include infant apparel, bibs, baseball caps, sweatshirts, beach towels, golf towels, mugs and stickers.

To promote the line on the national stage, Killion has exhibited at gift shows in New York City, Atlanta and Boston. At the Boston show, she processed $73,000 in sales. Killion and three part-time employees now work for Townie—and six more employees work for Sylvia’s By the Sea.

Changing tack

Of course, keeping up with the demands of a 4,000-square-foot store and a thriving imprinting business might be enough for any retail entrepreneur, but until recently, Killion also ran a second Sylvia’s location in nearby Cohasset Village. She recently sold the store—lock, stock and barrel.

Fortunately, Killion didn’t have to look far for the right buyer. Aware that one of her employees was planning to open her own gift shop, Killion offered her first bid on some hutches and other store fixtures, before she put the store on the market. Instead, the employee, Nichols Cheever, announced that she wanted to purchase the entire store as is. The women worked out a deal and soon Sylvia’s was re-named Mermaids at Little Harbor, with Killion’s blessing and continued moral support. “I really wanted [to sell the store to] someone who was going to put into it the same energy that I had,” she says. “I was very picky about who I wanted to sell it to.” Cheever, who has over 20 years of retail experience, easily met Killion’s criteria on several levels.

It was a difficult decision to sell the store but it had to be done. With the success of the Townie line and sales rolling in from the flagship store, plus four children and a husband at home (not to mention the chocolate lab) with whom Killion wanted to spend more time, it was clear to her that something had to give.

It was time to balance the ship. Sales had “exploded” on every front, “more than just the Townie” line, she says. At both Sylvia’s locations, sales were brisk even in January, when many local retailers report low traffic and relatively quiet registers. The post-Christmas lull can be especially slow in coastal Massachusetts, where cold, windy winter days keep shoppers hunkered down at home.

Guiding light

Cheever is not the first aspiring gift shop owner that Killion has helped. Never one to turn down an opportunity to mentor, Killion is currently helping two lawyers become gift shop owners. She is also helping someone else write a gift shop business plan. Her most important piece of advice to these and other future gift shop owners? “Take it one step at a time,” she says.

“So many people . . . say they want to open their own boutique, but they don’t have the courage or the wherewithal,” says Killion. If she can help others get focused, get organized and get going to turn their retail dreams into brick-and-mortar realities, then the effort is well worth it, she says.

Killion seems to be drawn to other entrepreneurial retailers—and artists like herself. The Scituate store actually started out as an artists collective of sorts, with Killion hand-painting furniture and renting three-by-five-foot spaces to other artisans for just $60 a month and a small percentage of sales. “The store was quite eclectic, with a little bit of everything,” Killion recalls.

Eventually she decided to scale back on the number of artists, stock additional product lines purchased at wholesale, and turn the space into a full-fledged gift shop. She still works with some of the artists today, however. “I just had a new artist join my store and she makes the most beautiful hair bows for little girls,” says Killion. “I have three little girls so I’m always on the radar” for products for young girls.

When the new artist first presented Killion with the hair bow idea, she feared a product without a nautical touch might not sell well. “More than half of our jewelry is nautical,” she says. So she suggested the artist add sea-glass accents to the designs. The hair bows sold out in no time and are now part of the store’s product lineup.

Other jewelry products sold at Sylvia’s include trendy necklaces of silver and crystal, bracelets from the Cape Cod line, earrings, chains, watches, rings and pendants. Handmade jewelry from local artists feature beads, silver and sea glass. And although many of the Sylvia’s By The Sea products are themed to the shop’s coastal backyard, products can be purchased by anyone from anywhere through the shop’s website, SylviasBytheSea.com.

A good life

Today, between running the website, the Scituate store, the Townie division, and mentoring other aspiring gift shop owners, there just isn’t enough time for Killion to paint products for sale in the store anymore. “If I’m in the mood I’ll paint wine glasses or little things,” she says.

Most days Killion can be found chatting with customers, ordering product for the store, fulfilling Townie orders, returning phone calls and doing the one thousand or so “little things” that are part of every gift shop owner’s life.

And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Kristine Hansen

Hansen writes frequently for business and consumer publications. Her articles have appeared in NWA World Traveler and Garden Design.Kristine-Hansen.com