It’s a hot and dry summer afternoon last week at the North Center Park shopping center on Tom Hill Sr. Boulevard. Inside a newly opened ladies’ fashion store, Jewels, near the Kmart, Joy Giles attends to her three customers who are checking out a variety of ladies’ items on sale -- handbags, jewelry and other accessories -- as Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright” plays in the background.
It was more than a year ago that Giles and her husband, Thomas (Beau), shuttered their 17-year-old women’s fashion and jewelry store in Macon and headed for Nashville, Tenn., hoping for greener pastures. Looks, the store they closed, was located at 4523 Forsyth Road. They sold handbags, belts, sterling silver and other women’s accessories. The retail environment, understandably, was quite tough everywhere and the couple did not see much growth prospects in Macon.
“In Macon, the thing that has always bothered me the most is how it’s so spread out that there are so many different areas. Because we have all these locations, they have all these empty spaces and you just don’t know where to be retail-wise,” says Giles, a native of Iron City, Ga. “It’s like a running growth pattern. Instead of sticking to one place and making it wonderful, it’s just chase, chase, chase.”
The sense of emptiness she felt after her two daughters left the city to pursue higher education in Atlanta and Nashville provided the initial motivation to leave Macon, Giles said. The dim growth prospects then made the decision easier.
So the couple went to be with their youngest daughter in Nashville. But while Giles enjoyed some family time there, the country music capital didn’t pack much punch for her business.
“It did not have the convenience of Macon and the friends (customers) that I had left here,” Giles said. A people person, she says she also felt “strange” entering the grocery store in Nashville and seeing faces of people she did not know.
Nashville also posed some of the same problems she faced in Macon. “It (Nashville) is so spread out you don’t know what area to be in,’’ Giles said. The area she and her husband chose charged exorbitant fees. She also had to make a major lifestyle change in the big city, and missed her old house.
“It just didn’t feel right,” she said.
So Giles came back to Macon.
“This new store is going to be amazing,” she said. “More service-oriented and a warm, welcome place for people to come and enjoy everybody too.” Jewels closed for interior remodeling last Saturday after a month-long sale event. It will reopen in August after the renovation is complete.
Not only new in name, Jewels will also feature two additional services. First, the couple will introduce wardrobe consultation. Under this program, Giles will help ladies alter the look of their items through changes in minor accessories -- without needing the customers to buy a new item. Giles will also advise customers on their clothing.
The other addition will be a long-planned online store, which the couple hopes to launch by this fall.
Still, Giles is aware of the challenges ahead for her business in this time of sluggish economic recovery. “Retail in general is tough,” she said. “We have to offer the same good products at a good price.”
To contact writer Manu Bhandari, call 744-4331.
