The Big Story of Shopping Small

Independently owned small businesses feed the local economy in many ways. Plus, they offer holiday shoppers some truly unique choices for gifts that national stores simply cannot match. We have highlighted five mom-and-pop shops that bring quality products, stellar customer service and hometown pride to their work every day. We’re sure you’ll find the perfect gift for that special someone at one of these intriguing locales.

b. lovely

Northside Marketplace, Akron  |  www.facebook.com/shopblovely  |  shopblovely@gmail.com

Lyndsey Marie is something of an ambassador for Cuyahoga Falls in Akron. “I’m from Cuyahoga Falls, born and raised, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think ‘she left us for Akron!’” Marie has brought her b.lovely clothing shop to Northside’s Marketplace this fall for its first permanent brick-and-mortar home. But she plans to continue searching for a second location in the Falls. “What would be ideal is if I ended up having two little spaces,” she says.

Marie’s business grew out of a fashion blog she started years ago that gained popularity and morphed into a personal shopping side gig. “People seemed to trust my style,” she says. “Then a lightbulb went off: I should open my own women’s store!”

She took it step by step, doing trunk shows in people’s homes and pop-up shops in various locations while she built a following of loyal clientele and a reputation for trendy, classy styles that bridge the work-casual divide. Marie has lots of friends who teach and want outfits they can feel professional in, then transition into a girls’ night or date night out. “I would say my style is a little bit athleisure, but I have a little bit of an edge. I like things that are cute, quirky; if it’s perfect for three different occasions, that’s something I’m going to buy.”

One of Marie’s biggest fashion influences is her mother. “She’s always been super stylish. That’s probably where I get my love for clothes and fashion from.” That influence helps Marie select inventory that will appeal to a wider age range, as well as a variety of body types. “I have these five people in my head when I shop for something: my three best friends, myself and my mom.” These five run the gamut from super-skinny to curvaceous, short to tall, and conservative to daring in style. “When I look at a piece I think of each of these people. If there’s not at least three people who would buy it, I won’t choose it.” Then she buys in small quantities, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. “People like the exclusivity of it,” she says. “They’re not going to see someone at the same event wearing it.”

Northside Marketplace seems like exactly the right place for Marie and b. lovely right now. She’s happy to be in the company of so many other exciting local ventures, like Butter Your Nuts, Akron Honey Company, Craft Beer Bar, and Dirty River Bikes. The centralized checkout and collaborative nature of the space takes pressure off business owners and gives shoppers a fabulous one-stop location for gift buying that Marie says becomes a circular win-win.

“Especially for the holidays, to give somebody something that’s local and unique, you can feel good about supporting somebody individual and local. Then [you’re] excited to tell the recipient that it’s local. And the recipient thinks that’s really cool. Then they in turn will support a local business as well. It’s a domino effect.”

Red Letter Days

138 Burbick Way, Kent  |  www.redletterdayskent.com

Retail is in Michelle Sahr ’s DNA. “We could go back to 1926, [when] my grandmother started Honey Gold Perfume Company across from Luigi’s,” she says. When Sahr’s father retired from the Navy in 1970, he opened a shop in Akron selling his mother’s Honey Gold products at first, then morphing into the Little Red Wagon toy store. “I grew up basically in the Quaker Square building,” Sahr says of roaming the halls and shops of that storied downtown location in her childhood.

Now, Sahr and her husband own the Kent Cheesemonger and Off the Wagon, along with Red Letter Days, a specialty stationary and gift shop that grew out of Off the Wagon. “I really wanted to expand on Off the Wagon’s offerings, and we didn’t have room,” she says.

Originally located in a little space tucked away behind other stores on Burbick Way, Red Letter Days is a “stationary store for writers, readers, artists and givers” that offers unique instruments and implements to inspire creativity. “In Kent, there are tons of people who are artistically minded, and it’s a university town, so it seemed natural to do a stationary-slash-artistically oriented store,” Sahr says. She prides herself on creating a selection of products that appeal to creative types, items you wouldn’t find in a typical big-box store, like fountain pens by Faber Castell. “One thing I’ve learned is how to curate a unique selection of products people really enjoy,” she says. “When I look for products, I look for things that are inspirational, a unique tool that might inspire you to try something new.” Unique and colorful note cards, wrapping paper, notebooks, marker sets and gift items line the shelves of this unabashedly Kent-proud shop.

Living and working in Kent, Sahr is passionate about the way shopping local helps create the character of a town. “It allows for unique places to exist in the place where you live,” she says. “We wouldn’t exist if people locally didn’t support us. It gives unique flair to places. If we continually support just big box stores, all our communities are going to look the same.” That unique flair is visible throughout downtown Kent in store fronts that occupy former bank buildings and factories, the iconic Kent Stage theater, and the carefully crafted way Acorn Alley knits all these elements into a cohesive community. “It’s about more than just the businesses,” Sahr says. “It’s about the architecture and the [way] they all work together.”

Some of Sahr’s favorite local places are Popped! and Fresco Mexican Grill. “I’m [also] excited about Treno but haven’t eaten there yet.” The Italiano ristorante occupies the former train depot overlooking the Cuyahoga that housed the Pufferbelly for generations.

Building on the foundations of retail success inherited from her father and grandmother, Sahr remains grounded in history as she works for the future of her community. “We support local charities. We give money and prizes,” she says. “That’s the kind of thing you don’t get from [the] big boxes.”

The Polka Dot Pincushion

3807 Brecksville Road, Richfield  |  330-659-0233

“This really is about women coming together and supporting each other, not only in quilting but in life,” says Debbie Allen of the Polka Dot Pincushion, the shop she co-owns in Richfield. Allen started quilting late in life, though she comes from a long line of hand-crafting women. “All of the women in my life were creative in some way,” she says. “Both my grandmothers and great-grandmothers were quilters, sewers, did crewel work.” Despite this lineage, Allen worked as an accountant until retiring in 2007 at the age of 44. “It became too much of who I was. I’ve always wanted to go into business for myself, but I never knew what the ‘what’ was.”

While training with her mother for the Susan G. Komen 3-Day walk event, Allen reminisced about living in Oklahoma City next door to a woman who ran a quilt shop. “I said, ‘that’s the only thing that I wished I had learned how to do.’ And that was it: we bought machines, took a class and found the Polka Dot Pincushion.”

There, Allen met Ronnie Rajkovich , who had opened the shop in 2005, and the two became fast friends. “She’s probably one of the most creative right-handed people I’ve ever met and a tremendous teacher.” Not only did Allen develop a passion for modern quilting, she started working for Rajkovich at the shop before the year was out and found a second chapter for her life. In 2016, she and Rajkovich made the shop a partnership, sharing responsibilities and moving into a larger space. “It was a great way for us to balance our lives,” she says. “The two of us combined are better than the two of us individually.”

In their expanded space, Rajkovich and Allen offer more classes and events, like Soup, Slippers and Stitching on Super Bowl Sunday and Flip-Flops, Flame and Fa-La-La for Christmas in July—both immensely successful parties for customers and friends. “It’s as much about the quilting as it is about the community,” she says. “We’re a tremendous support system for each other. A lot of women are retiring, and the quilt shop becomes their social network.”

They recently became an official Bernina dealer, expanding their service to machines. “We have a lot of grandmas who are interested in passing along their talents to their granddaughters,” Allen says. This holiday season, she plans to have specials on smaller machines that would be ideal gifts for a younger generation starting to sew. “And we tend to do a lot of quick projects that can be done for the holidays, kits that allow you to make a small something that is a great hostess gift or gift exchange item.”

Allen is impressed with how loyal many quilters can be, scouring local shops before resorting to buying anything online. “The visual [and] tactile are what people are looking for, and the human interaction.” Allen, herself, loves to shop locally, especially at Déjà Vu in Stow and Anna Louise’s in Louisville. Find the club, group or event for your social quilter, along with free patterns to download, at www.pdpincushion.com.

Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom

1180 S. Main St., North Canton  |   330-244-9008

With the new Lego Ninjago Movie building on the success of the original Lego Movie from 2014, Lego bricks and toys have brought the joy of imaginative play to yet another generation of children. But you don’t need to be a kid to love Legos. “Troy has always loved Lego,” says Heather Marks , Director of Marketing and Special Events at Sir Troy’s Toy Kingdom, which is named for her friend since junior high school and the store’s owner, Troy Cefaratti . “He still had Lego builds in his room in high school; it was the nerdiest thing. I used to ask when [he would] outgrow this. I’ve stopped asking.”

Marks and Cefaratti first opened a store dedicated to “imagination-powered” toys at the Hartville Marketplace in 2009. That was after they discovered that many individual pieces and sets sold for much higher prices online than they did at local stores. Cefaratti had begun reselling pieces online about nine years earlier, and his acumen at spotting and stocking bricks and pieces that collectors sought out garnered quite a following. “He has the largest selection and variety of Lego in Northeast Ohio,” Marks says. “Other retailers recommend coming here for hard-to-find things.”

By 2012, they had become so busy that they opened a second location in North Canton, which they expanded into a larger space in 2014. This year, the duo decided to focus solely on the North Canton location. “The downside of Hartville is there was nowhere to store stuff,” Marks says. “This was a better path.”

Marks finds that the big-box stores cannot compete with the warm, personalized service she and Cefaratti offer. “There are customers I can tell you their names,” Marks says. Often, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or those without children of their own may be confused about what to buy for certain age groups. “We can help with that. And we get a lot of grandparents who have sticker shock; we can help them find something the child will like that won’t break the bank.”

As a flagship dealer for Breyer Horses and a platinum partner with Playmobile, Sir Troy’s always stocks quality toys that don’t require batteries or have screens. Along with Legos, they carry Lincoln Logs, wooden toddler toys made by Hape, puzzles, games, wooden trains, regular train sets, and all the tracks and accessories for them. “While we have things in every price range, Troy is focused on quality so you’re not going to give your kids junk,” Marks says. “We are your hometown toy store.”

The store also hosts various workshops, events, and birthday parties. The fourth Tuesday of every month, parents can bring the kids in to swap their unwanted Lego minifigs with other kids. In December, Marks is planning a free storytime event, where kids can interact with costumed characters while their parents get some shopping done. Workshops—usually Lego-themed building projects from pre-assembled kits—incur a small fee to cover the cost of materials. As if all that weren’t enough to get holiday shoppers to Sir Troy’s, there’s also an extensive all-Lego train set on display that has been growing since 2001. Get all the store details at www.sirtroys.com.

The Raspberry and The Rose

241 S. Court St., Medina  |  330-052-1600  |  www.theraspberryandtherose.com

“If somebody had said to me, ‘you’re going to own a retail store’ when I was in college, I would have laughed!” says Melissa Ziogas , owner of The Raspberry and The Rose in Medina. Her college degree was in literature, and upon graduation, she went to work for Glencoe/McGraw-Hill in Columbus editing middle school math textbooks.

When she and her husband began having children, she transitioned to doing editing work from home. As their brood grew, though, she stopped that, as well. “I needed to do something, so I started crafty things,” she says. She’d had a penchant for arts and crafts all her life, so working with silk and dried flowers came naturally. People liked her work, and eventually she did flowers for a few weddings. She and her mother, Donna, shared in the creative fun, expanding their work to antiquing furniture and eventually jewelry making. They took their wares to the craft show circuit, traveling to Pennsylvania, Indiana and Michigan while Ziogas’s husband cared for the kids. Mother and daughter often talked about the possibility of one day opening a store together while they were on the road, envisioning what a great adventure that would be.

Life has a way of throwing cruel curve balls at most of us, and such was the case for the dream Ziogas and her mother had. In 2012, Donna lost a long battle with cancer and died. Ziogas kept within her the flame of her mother’s entrepreneurial spirit, and in 2014, she opened a tiny retail space on Washington Street. With a groundswell of success, she moved The Raspberry and The Rose around the corner to its current Court Street location in the winter of 2015 and expanded her inventory to include a wide variety of unique women’s accessories.

“We try to favor things that are manufactured in the U.S.,” Ziogas says. “We try to buy from companies that are manufacturing here, and smaller establishments, like us. They tend to be better products, and people really like that.” One of her favorites—and a favorite of shoppers—is a line of scarves made from textile remnants by a company called Dona Bela Shreds in Iowa.

Occasionally, Ziogas will still design or alter a piece of jewelry for a client, but most of her energy now goes to sustaining not only her own business but the viability of her local economy. “We have a fundraising program at the store called Shop to Share,” she says. “We pick an evening and a time frame, and we’ll give back 20 percent of whatever our sales are to the sponsoring organization.” Whether she is getting her printing needs met at the local print shop, buying dance lessons for her daughter from the lady up the street, or serving locally baked cookies at an event, Ziogas works hard to help sustain her neighboring small businesses. “I am a big fan of JK Gift Shop, Antiquation, [and] P.J. Marley’s, [where] all of the beef they serve in their burgers is local,” she says. Her mother would be so proud.