Dear friends, customers, and supporters of Perspicasity-Cabana,
It has been my privilege to begin my second career in Seaside 38 years ago and to meet all of you. I truly enjoyed helping you and your daughters, mothers, and friends find the perfect vacation clothes. Thank you for your patience while I was learning how to run a business. Boy did I make some mistakes!
Over the past ten years Erica Pierce, the GM of The Seaside Style, and I have been mentoring a group of younger women to teach them about the aesthetics of The Seaside Style. Like everything else in our lives the boutique retail business has changed over the past 38 years and I have aged out of this industry. Nowadays to do business you must be adept at developing websites, Instagram and TikTok, etc. I’m thrilled that I have staff that finds this fun and challenging.
There are customers who have stopped by our new Cabana store in the old Willow and Artful Eye location and expressed their disappointment that the outdoor boutique no longer exists and we that have moved the business inside. To those friends, I say I’m sorry that they are disappointed. I know fully what it’s like to love a place just as it was when you first fell in love and discovered it. I feel that way about Rome. It’s called the eternal city, but even so, it changes; sometimes the changes are improvements, but I treasure my memories of Rome circa 1977.
Perspicasity/Cabana was run for 38 years in one location without any extensive renovation, in the same temporary plywood huts day in and day out, in Florida weather, withstanding hurricanes and tropical storms that came their way. I never expected that business to last as long as it did. Who would have thought?
I am very proud of my younger team members, led by Makenzie Carter, for creating such a fantastic new boutique for Seaside. They have exceeded my expectations and I hope yours as well. Believe me, it’s not easy to see younger folks come along and create something more wonderful than you could have done. On the other hand, I’m thrilled to know that Seaside can go forward into the future and that I have done my best to be a sensitive fiduciary, coach, and cheerleader for the mom-and-pop businesses here in town.
During the past two years of Covid in our small towns and cities over the country, we have witnessed mom-and-pop entrepreneurs going out of business. It will be difficult in this economic climate for small boutique businesses to make a comeback in any significant way. I urge you to support small boutique businesses in your hometown as well as in Seaside. They are the backbone of this country.
I have enjoyed every minute of the past 38 years and I thank you again for taking this ride with me.
