Sisters Jayde Stewart Fellom and Phoebe Stewart, owners of the Blonde Sisters Boutique in downtown Perry, announced Sunday their store will close at the end of September, two years after opening.
“Unfortunately, Blonde Sisters Boutique will be closing,” their Facebook post said. “Not something we thought we would be announcing and we both have really heavy hearts having to make this decision. We love our store dearly and are so proud of what we have built over the last two years!”
The store carried a selection of women’s shoes, clothing and jewelry.
“It’s not a decision we made very lightly,” Stewart Fellom said. “The economy just really sucks right now for small businesses. It’s not just us.”
The store will be closed this week until Friday, Aug. 23, when it will reopen for a going-out-of-business sale.
“Thank you to everyone who has shown us so much love and support over the last two years,” the blonde sisters said. “We love you, and we have loved serving our home town community.”
The announced closure follows other recently shuttered downtown businesses, Ben’s Five and Dime and Hastings Funeral Home.
I don’t think the general public realizes how hard it is to be a retail entrepreneur who is trying to compete against such entities as Walmart and Amazon. You have absolutely no buying power, and you have to provide an absolute niche product and or service to make a go of it because price is something you will never be able to compete. I tried for 5 years in Kansas City, giving the absolute pinnacle of customer service, and carried women’s apparel and sizes that were not readily available except by mail order in the early ’90s, and I still heard complaints after complaint about prices even though I charged a straight 50% markup versus the usual 100%. My clothes were all manufactured in the USA and very high quality as well, and 30 years later I still have some in my wardrobe. That’s the quality I was selling. But Americans want inexpensive and disposable. So the private enterprise and the family entrepreneur is slowly dying out to the multinational corporation, and probably by the end of the 2020s it will be a thing of the past just like so many other things. Best wishes from someone else who tried and failed her several generations of entrepreneurial family.