You might have heard that we have a little satellite store at Stratton Mountain Resort this month. It’s true! It’s the Stratton “Pop Shop.” What’s the scoop? Here you go…
Marcia, she’s the Editor/Publisher at Stratton Magazine and Manchester Life Magazine, reached out with the idea of a “Pop Up Shop” in the Stratton Village and asked if we’d be interested in popping up a JOY shop. Pop up stores are a trendy thing in retail where stores “pop up” for a certain period of time without traditional year-long or more leases. I loved the idea and when the timing worked out for March 2018, I said to sign us up.
Stratton Village is a quaint little resort shopping and eating experience and the “Pop Shop” is smack in the middle – across the cobblestones from the Market and Deli. The Pop Shop is adorable and full of windows with 319 square feet of retail space. Stratton Magazine has been managing the tenants on a month-long basis for a couple of winters now. Our friends at TSE Cashmere and 3 Pears Gallery have tried it and gave thumbs up reports. I had a hunch that JOY would be a hit at Stratton and after hearing their success I decided to give it a try.
For the JOY Team, setting up a second location has been fun and educational. There’s been the inventory aspect to it – what type of merchandise should we bring to Stratton? There’s been the administrative aspect to it – how to set up a second location cash register? There’s been the marketing aspect to it – how to market it without being confusing to our home base in Manchester?
Julie, the JOY buyer extraordinaire, had a vision on what kind of merchandise the pop shoppers at Stratton
might like to purchase. She’s loved the idea of the “Pop Shop” from the beginning. She’s been curating the inventory for months working with specific vendors on items that we thought might do well. While our shop in Manchester is best known for bras, we knew that the Stratton shop was going to be different. It’s a little more of a “boutique” look up at the Pop Shop with sleepwear and loungewear being the focus and a little bit of underwear and lingerie sprinkled in to round out the JOY flair. We bring new things up each weekend.
Getting all the cash register stuff to work in a second location and merge with all the inventory in our system in Manchester was a whole other project. Thank God for people like Lila, our Director of Details. She thrives on such things. Everything related to point-of-sale: scanning bar codes, swiping credit cards, and doing the end-of-day deposit has gone seamlessly. I feel like I say it every blog, but this stuff is might as well be rocket science to me. It all works. I am psyched.
Marketing the Pop Shop has been really fun. We get the use of a lovely sign set up on the cobblestones for Village passers-by to see and we also had the cutest JOY sign made that hangs on the outside of the store. I’ve been having a blast with Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook posts and was so excited on the very first day when a woman and her husband came in from a couple of runs and said, “We found out about you on Instagram!” Gotta love a little hashtag #stratton!
For me personally, bringing JOY up to Stratton has been a sort of a homecoming. About 15 years ago, I 
worked for the resort in the Human Resources Department. It was a job and environment that I really enjoyed. And then well, there is this story… Five years ago, it was here at Stratton in the Stratton Base Lodge that my now husband Matt first laid eyes on me. My friend Amy (who owns The Perfect Wife Restaurant) invited me to help her at the Taste of Vermont one February Saturday night. The Taste of Vermont is a fundraiser for the Stratton Foundation where a bunch of restaurants, inns, and other food companies set up booths for all to taste and vote on. Your entry fee is a donation and you get to try out all the foods. My task that night was to look pretty and pass out Amy’s crab cakes in front of The Perfect Wife booth for anyone who wanted a taste.
At some point in the evening a man asked me, “Are you the perfect wife?” I don’t know what got into me, but I had one of my funniest replies to a question and responded with, “It depends who’s asking.” He went away, and I just kept serving crab cakes. I still don’t know who that guy was, but Matt – (my now husband Matt who I had no idea who he was at the time) – overheard that conversation and called Amy within the next few days. Matt asked her who I was, if I was single, and if he could have my number. She ran all this by me first before giving him my number, of course, because that’s what girlfriends do. We’ll be married a year next month!
As a business owner, you never know which risks are going to pan out until you try. The decision to open a second location at Stratton has turned out to be a good one. Not to get too CEO on you (ha!), but diversifying revenue streams with a pop up is an amazing way to get some incremental income into your business. You have to weigh out the the inventory and staffing commitment, but I’m finding that this little test is working out. I am so grateful.
Making new friends, trying new things, expanding the JOY brand, growing the business, stretching the capabilities of the JOY Team, increasing sales, grateful to history…it has all made this “Stratton Pop Up” thing pretty cool. Thanks for your support and your interest! We’ve signed up with Marcia and the Stratton Magazine crew to do it again for Wanderlust and for March 
2019. Why wouldn’t we? Right?
Bring it on. Let it snow. Amy brought me a bottle of champagne when I got engaged.
Let’s rock.
xo Joy
Joy Proft is the owner of JOY all things underthings in Manchester Center, Vermont (and a satellite “Pop Shop” at Stratton Mountain Resort in the month of March). She has no idea why she’s so lucky. A good bra helps.
