15 Years of Adventures in Retail!

Roxie

Even as I am writing this, it is so hard to believe that I am reflecting on the past 15 years of my life.  In some ways it has flown by, and in other ways 15 years seems so long ago!  You have heard me say before that I was young and dumb when I started this adventure in retail so many years ago! I was fresh out of The University of Georgia with no clue what I wanted to do next.  I always swore I was never moving back to my home town of Ocilla, GA, but it was home that came calling after graduation.  So I made my way back, and here I sit, 15 years later, with a life I never could have dreamed up for myself!

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​In 2003, my dad had been retired for a couple of years and was running a floral and event business with his business partner, Lisa.  They decided to take on a huge project in our downtown by renovating this century-old, Greek-revival style bank building.

The renovations began in the spring, and I moved home in the summer of 2003.  The building was to house a market-style retail shop with a café in the downstairs and an event space upstairs.  Dad and Lisa were going to need someone to run the shop while they focused on the floral business, so I agreed to come home for one year and help get things going.

​That June-December of my life flew by!  I worked part-time at another gift shop downtown to make a little money until our shop opened.  On days I wasn’t working, I helped work on the building.  As you look at all of my pictures, you might be imagining a very large work crew that got this place whipped into shape in such a short period of time, but you would be wrong!  Dad and Lisa, with the help of a couple of paid workers, lots of family, and many sweet volunteers, moved mountains that summer.  I have never done so much painting in my life!  

In the meantime, I had found a little house to rent just around the corner from the house I grew up in, but it too needed a lot of work. I spent my nights (with my sweet family helping) working on what was to be my home for the next 12 years. (Long before I began my Alder St. Renovation) I moved into my 5th St. house in October of 2003 and I still don't know how we managed to do so much in such a short amount of time, while working on the building! We ripped out carpet, refinished 100 year old floors, totally remodeled the tiny kitchen, and painted every square inch! Maybe this is why I don’t like watching renovation shows on T.V. - I have lived it too many times!

​The Shoppes at Fourth and Cherry opened in August of 2003, and I was blown away by the excitement of the community.  The first couple of weeks were so fun.  People flocked in to see the building.  

All of the older residents in town had so many great stories to share of what the building was when they were young - how they used to get their hair done upstairs at Lily Mae’s beauty shop, or how they dreaded having to climb those tall stairs to get their shots at the health department.  

The shop was just beautiful and unlike any store we had ever had in our little town before.  Lisa was, and is, a very talented designer.  I soaked up so much from her in a short amount of time and definitely learned a lot about the design aspect of running a store from both her and my dad.  ​

The grueling work didn’t end when we opened, as we had to move upstairs to finish renovations in time for a wedding in October!  I was still painting trim the morning of the wedding while Dad and Lisa were doing all of the flowers! ​

That was a crazy weekend, but I guess at that point, we had all gotten used to the hustle.  Fifteen years later, I can tell you that the hustle continues!  There is always something to fix, paint, clean, move, or cry over in this old building.  It has been a labor of love for sure!

I like to say I went to the school of hard knocks in the early days.  With Dad and Lisa, you have to catch on fast!  One wedding weekend they left me in the florist shop and said, “We need 15 table arrangements; we’ll be back after we decorate the church.”  I guess I should have been honored that they had so much confidence in my abilities, but I was stressing!  It seems I had soaked up a few tricks by watching my dad all those years because the arrangements turned out ok, but I was a nervous wreck!  Another weekend, we were catering a party in a neighboring town.  Dad and Lisa had done an out-of-town wedding and were traveling to be back just in time for the dinner that night.  She had me, by myself, take pot roast for about 100 people to the venue with all of our cookers to cook the roasts, with her giving me instructions over the phone.  I had never cooked a roast in my life!  

In 2004 Lisa’s husband, Harvey, was diagnosed with cancer that would later take his life.  This was a devastating diagnosis, and Lisa had to spend most of her time with him, traveling to treatments in Maryland and caring for him when he was sick.  Around the same time, my grandfather in Colorado became ill so my Dad was away for 8 weeks.  It was a stressful time for me to be pretty much alone at the shop so Dad and Lisa decided to sell the building and business.  The short version of this part of the story is: in walked Matt Seale.  He was a financial advisor from Atlanta and looking to invest in real estate.  Little did he know he was about to get a building, a retail shop, a floral and event business, a café, and a wife!

Matt bought the building and the business in the fall of 2004, so he and I have been in it together almost the entire time.  It was a trying first few years together, as we both had limited experience with events and running a small business.  I think we did pretty well considering how young we were!  We married quickly in August of 2007 because Matt was being sent to Iraq to serve with the Navy Reserve. It’s not the month I would have picked (the day we got married was, literally, the hottest day of the year) but it is pretty neat that our wedding anniversary always coincides with the anniversary of The Shoppes, since it is what brought us together in the first place.  We spent our first year of marriage apart, and looking back, it was probably the hardest year of my life so far.  Because of our quick wedding, I had to deal with the daily onslaught of nosy, southern women asking me when my baby was due.  I was a newlywed with no husband, the owner of a struggling small business with no business partner, and the caretaker of an old building that seemed to just develop one new problem after the other.  I don’t know what I would have done that year without my parents and a few really good friends.   Needless to say, that is not a time in my life I like to look back and dwell on!  

​The years rocked on as we continued catering events, making prom and wedding flowers, and keeping the shop going.   I have been involved in over 37 weddings and rehearsal suppers, countless smaller parties, and more funerals than I could ever count.  ​

Vendors in the shop came and went.  I have had over 40 vendors and 14 local consigners throughout the years.  It was so nice to get through those first few years of turnover and settle in with some serious shop owners that help make The Shoppes at Fourth and Cherry so great!  ​

​It has been so interesting to learn to deal with the specialties of running a business in a small, southern town.  Over the years I have had more than one person call and ask me to look up someone else’s number for them in the phone book.  I’ve had a customer ask me to order her something off the internet because she doesn’t have a computer.  I have customers drop off gifts for people (that they didn’t buy here) because they know we’ll make sure they get passed on to the right person.  I’ve had a customer give her bag of purchases to the mail man, as he walked in to deliver the mail, and ask him to deliver it to her mother at the nursing home (which he did, sweetly and without question).  I could fill a book with stories about customer interaction - some funny and some not so funny! The Fourth and Cherry team has been blessed over the years to have mostly very sweet people enter our doors, and we thrive on providing as many services as possible. We still operate a traditional wedding registry where brides can register for fine china, flatware and other things needed to set up a home.  We deliver to local showers, sell flatware by the piece (so there is something for everyone’s budget) and offer free gift wrap. We try to include the address of the giver on the back of every wedding card to make it a little easier for the bride to send her thank-you notes.  We’ve made salads with croutons only, cut crusts off of bread, and kept lists on the café wall of how certain customers like certain meals. We are happy to help customers over the phone, happy to pick out Christmas gifts when you send over the list, happy to walk your packages to your car, let you borrow our phone, and even fill out your check for you. (Yes we still take local checks and no, we don’t have a stamp.  If you don’t know what that means, you are definitely not from a small town.) 

Over the years our little business has grown, evolved and changed.  At some point we closed the florist, but I can’t remember what year.  The shop and the café were becoming busier, and my Dad was retired and traveling a lot, so it just made sense to let that go.  We have still continued to do weddings here and there because I just find it so hard to say no! The Café has slowly grown and now offers a much more extensive menu than we did in the beginning.  The Fourth and Cherry Company now has three full-time employees in addition to seven part-time.  I can’t pass up the chance to mention that Mrs. Carolyn has been with us the entire time we’ve been in business.  She has long been a friend of my family and came to work in The Café after she retired from the school system.  Her hours have shortened over the years and roles have changed, but she has been a steadfast and dependable friend to us over the last 15 years. She has tried to “retire” at least twice, but we are always thrilled when she decides she wants to come back!  She tells me she is going to retire for good when she is 80, so I’ll keep you posted on that! And one other fun fact, Mrs. Carolyn came to Lily Mae’s beauty shop, located in the upstairs of our building, on her wedding day to get a perm!  Just one example of how the history of our building is so intertwined with the history of our community and the lives of our customers.  

In 2015 (deciding that we didn’t already have enough to do) we created The Southern Mercantile.  I had always loved the name and even threw it in the hat when Dad and Lisa were choosing a name for the shop.  I kept it in the back of my mind with the hopes of getting to use it one day.  We are now growing and building this new brand, while running The Shoppes and Café at Fourth and Cherry, in an attempt to expand our market a little bit and share our love of the South.  We are on a mission to preserve some of our more noble traditions by sharing our simple, southern lives with you.  It has been so exciting to meet many of you at shows when we are traveling, and to hear from you through email, social media and the website.  We have loved every minute of getting to connect with a whole new tribe!

​We are excited to share with you that The Southern Mercantile is currently setting up a brick and mortar home inside The Shoppes at Fourth and Cherry!  The historic bank room of our building is in transition and will soon be our flagship Southern Mercantile location.  The bank vault has already been set up as the Southern Merc office and we are slowly transforming the retail space into a beautiful shopping area.  It’s just another way the Fourth and Cherry Company is growing and changing.

Love for our community is at the heart of everything we do.  In 2011, Matt and I made a choice to stay here and to commit to working hard for Ocilla.  We work hard to keep this building standing, keep this shop running, and keep our online presence thriving because we want to see our little town prosper.  Our team has a deep desire to continue to love, encourage, support and work for the community we live in.  We thank all of you from the bottom of our hearts for your support of our mission.  Whether you have been a fan of The Shoppes for the last 15 years, or if you are a new fan of The Southern Mercantile, we want you to know that you are appreciated.  Every purchase you make, every Facebook post you share, every kind comment you give, strengthens our mission as we move to be a force for good in our community. 

​If it seems this post has been more like the story of the last 15 years of my life rather than just the history of my business, it is because they are so connected, I could never attempt to separate them.  This shop and what it means to our little town is all I know.  It has been my everything.  I am humbled when I think of all of the people that have loved and supported me personally over the last 15 years.  Without your support and prayers (and checking for my horns from time to time), I would have succumbed to stress and discouragement many times.  I can’t wrap this up without a very special Thank You to my parents!  You are such an example of selfless love, always there to help, no matter what the problem is.  Water, termites, absent employees, plumbing problems, leaky roofs, holiday baking; nothing keeps you from running to my aid!

​15 years of perspective has helped me to see that time and time again, the Lord has provided just what we need, when we need it.  I know He will do the same for the next 15!