Within weeks of finishing graduate school, two Latham women became business owners, taking over a personalized gift shop they purchased on July 15.
We always wanted to go into business, said Jodi S. Emmott, co-owner with her twin sister, Heather Stein, of the store Clearly Yours in Newton Plaza. `The opportunity just kind of fell into our laps. We went and talked to the old owner and it just went from there.`
The store mainly focuses on personalizing gifts such as T-shirts and baby clothes, and its big draw is Vera Bradley products. The store has a group of sewers who embroider the names of the customers on the products they purchase as well as engravings.
While Stein said their main target audience is middle-aged women, she said the store has a wide variety of products that appeal to those in high school and college. The display window showcases back-to-school materials, a Sesame Street collection and some Vera Bradley products.
This isn’t exactly what the sisters had in mind as both of them were planning on heading to New York City to look for work after they graduated from Union College in June. But when their mother, an avid customer at Clearly Yours, tipped them off that owner Mary Jo Johnson was looking to retire and sell the business, the women saw an opportunity.
`It had no electronic computer system or inventory system,` said Emmott. `The layout needed to be redone. Products in this store were very similar to what they are now, but we’ve slowly been bringing in new lines. The customer’s need wasn’t being fulfilled on certain products.`
According to Stein, they remodeled the store in a way that it is more open and gives customers a chance to better view the products.
With their expertise in technology and their youthful enthusiasm, Johnson said the sisters could `take the store to another level.`
`I was from the old school,` she said, `and I didn’t know much about computers. I saw the new blood and thought it was time to be updated.`
And that is exactly what the sisters plan to do. They are working on making the store virtual, which would let them sell some products online and showcase their in-store merchandise that can’t be sold over the Internet.
`We do have some restrictions,` said Stein. `We can’t sell Vera Bradley online.`
Emmott said Johnson had some words of advice for the sisters as well as some tips to help them succeed in furthering the business.
`Her three things of advice were get a computer system to track inventory, grow corporate gifts, which we already started to do, and bring in some new lines,` she said.
Johnson also stressed the importance of being female business owners, something Stein said she and her sister learned in high school at the Academy of Girls in Albany.
`She stressed female leadership,` Stein said of Johnson. `She said we’re setting the tone that there can be a female business.`
Even before the paperwork was signed and the Emmott and Stein were named owners, they were in the store watching how Johnson handled her transactions, worked in the backroom and viewed how she made her orders.
`She put a lot into it,` said Stein.
The sisters plan to bring in gilded glasses and crane cards and said if there is product that they don’t have that customers want, they have several vendors that they work with from whom they can order it.
Johnson what she wants most from the sisters is for them to keep the Mom and Pop personality of the store, which she said is what made the store successful in the first place.
`There’s no reason why they shouldn’t do well,` she said. `I wish them all the luck in the world.“