Today we’d like to introduce you to Brenda Sanderson.
Brenda, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Our story began in 2015 in the town of Lake Crystal! I began restoring furniture and making handmade home decor.
After gaining a lot of interest through social media, my customer list began to grow, so in October 2015 I opened a storefront called Sisterhood Inspirations. After celebrating our 1st anniversary, we expanded our business to Eagle Lake and opened up a second location in Eagle Lake, Bella Nova Boutique. For 2 years, I ran both businesses, and though both locations did well, it started becoming incredibly time-consuming and honestly draining. I had 3 small kids at home, and at the time, I felt my time was being stretched very thin.
In 2018, a retail location in Old Town Mankato opened up, and after much consideration, my husband and I made the decision to combine both stores together, in one location. We closed the Lake Crystal and Eagle Lake store (both in small towns with light traffic flow) and combined them together in the new location on Riverfront Drive. We decided to keep the name Bella Nova, and have been running the store from the new location for 4 years.
We sell a wide range of items from Clothing, Jewelry, Home Decor, and Gifts. Although we don’t do the repurposed furniture, which is what started our original store, it is definitely something I still have a great interest in. My passion in life has always been interior design, and my long-term goal is to eventually open a sister store to Bella Nova solely focusing on decor, design, furniture, and home goods. However, that dream will need to wait until our 3 boys are gone from home because our life right now outside of work is all BASEBALL!
A busy life, but a wonderful life.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Our biggest struggle was opening the second location. Because both stores were less than 20 minutes from each other, we ended up competing with ourselves. We had a lot of our customers from the first store, start shopping at the second location because it was closer to their work or homes. We also had both stores in small towns, with no other retail. It was hard some days to get the traffic we wanted.
Once we combined the stores with the Riverfront location, we noticed a huge increase in traffic and customer retention. I think having my focus on one store vs two has also created a much more successful business. The other huge obstacle with so many Boutiques opening is trying to keep products fresh and new, and trying to constantly find inventory that other stores aren’t carrying. It can be very hard to have unique items. I’ve found once we start selling something, 3 other stores in town soon have it. We are constantly attending markets and new vendor shows to keep finding a new products.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My specialty at work is merchandising and purchasing. I make all the inventory selections for the store and do most of the display/merchandising. All the background work is done when our store is not open. We have the store open Thursday- Saturday, so my work is mainly done Monday-Wednesday.
I have an incredible sales staff that works with customers during store hours. I depend on them so much to help me keep the store running, and they far exceed my expectations…..I have been truly blessed with amazing staff.
What are your plans for the future?
For right now, Bella Nova will continue business as usual. We have found great success with our location, inventory selections, and hours.
We have a business that runs well, so why change what works? The future hope would be to eventually expand into a sister store and provide interior design and more home decor/home goods… but that is a way down the road. For now, we will continue doing what we do and my main focus aside from the store is being present in my boy’s life.
