The Business That Refused To “Scale" with Rebecca D'Emic

The iDesign Lab Podcast | Where Design, Business, and Culture Shape How We Live and Build

This iDesign Lab episode profiles Rebecca Demick and Elegant Child, a Boca Raton children's boutique that has grown into a 20-year family business without pursuing aggressive scaling. The conversation traces the store's origin

Key takeaways

• Elegant Child began in 2006 after Rebecca Demick's mother opened the store following earlier children's clothing businesses such as Duck Duck Goose and Puddle Ducks.
• Rebecca left pharmaceutical sales to join her mother, initially helping a few days a week while raising children before taking on more responsibility and now running most of the store.

Main topics

• Family business origin and Elegant Child's 20-year growth
• Boutique buying strategy at trade shows in New York, Dallas, Atlanta, Europe, and Boca Raton

Notable quotes

we always just buy what we both love.

Conclusion

The episode offers a practical look at how a boutique can remain profitable by

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This is iDesign Lab, a podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design. Curator of interiors, furnishings, and lifestyles. Hosted by Tiffany Woolley, an interior designer and a style enthusiast, along with her serial entrepreneur husband, Scott. iDesign Lab is your ultimate design podcast, where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design and its constant evolution in style and trends. Speaker 4 (0:31) Welcome to the iDesign Lab podcast. Today, we are talking with a true Boca Raton success story. Rebecca Demick, the woman, one of the women, behind Elegant Child, what started with her mother's dream grew into a 20-year family success story. It's a business built on style, service, community, and relationships. Rebecca left a career in pharmaceutical sales to join her mom. She became a mother herself and helped evolve Elegant Child into a well-loved South Florida institution. She's also a passionate community leader and supporter of Place of Hope. Today, we're going to go behind the boutique to hear the story of Rebecca, her family, and her business, and what it's really like to build something that lasts. Speaker 3 (1:18) Welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's Speaker 4 (1:21) so fun to have you here. Obviously, we've known each other for a really long time. elegant child coincided with the birth of my first child. And there was just something immediately very impactful about just the aesthetic and somebody who appreciates design and a designer myself. The whole thing was curated in such a beautiful way of, you know, being so sweet and just like you wanted to be in there and you wanted everything in the store. So tell us how it all began. I still feel that way today. Speaker 3 (1:56) I love being in there. So it started when I was a little girl, actually. My father was a pastor. We were living on the west coast of Florida. And my mother, we didn't have much money growing up, but my mother always had a real eye for design and fashion. So she would actually go garage selling for us to wealthy neighborhoods. And we were always the best dressed kids. I had a brother and sister at church, and people would always comment, where did you get their outfits? And from the shoes to the ruffle socks to the matching headband, she made sure we looked. Beautiful. And all Speaker 2 (2:28) through garage sales. All Speaker 3 (2:29) through garage sales. And she really just had an eye. She found brand new clothing with the tags on it from wealthy homes. Speaker 4 (2:34) And Speaker 3 (2:35) one day there was a business owner that was at our church. It was a church plant, so it was growing. And we were meeting in office buildings at the time. And he had a vacant unit attached to the building. And so he offered it to my mother to start something to help us bring in some more finances. So she opened up a used children's clothing store. And she would take us all with her every Friday and Saturday morning. We'd all go garage sailing, help her bring the stuff. And she always, you know, made sure it looked perfectly. Yeah, ironed Speaker 4 (3:03) it, Speaker 3 (3:03) you know, made sure everything had a great aesthetic look to it. And the store became very successful. And about five years later, she ended up. deciding to bring in new Easter dresses. And so it became a new and used children's clothing store. And she ended up getting an offer for someone to buy the store. So she sold it, moved 15 miles across town, and opened up another store called Duck Duck Goose. And it was more new clothing this time, about half and half new and used. And then my dad got called to be a pastor in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. And that was when I started high school. So we moved up to New York. She sold the business. We kind of planted in New York. And then a year or two later, she got antsy again. Such a calling. Decided to open up now a brand new, all new, high-end children's clothing store in Oyster Bay called Puddle Ducks. And we had customers like Sarah Jessica Parker that would shop there. And it was a beautiful boutique. She brought in a lot of brands from France and just kind of grew with the business. And then... My parents ended up moving back to Boca, which is my home base. That's where I was born. And they moved here to help take care of my brother's child. At the time, his wife was struggling with postpartum depressions that kind of brought them back to the community. And sure enough, she got antsy again and decided to open up Elegant Child in 2006. And it's such Speaker 4 (4:27) a success story because I remember like literally walking and there was the one bay and like, you know, a year later, there'd be the second bay. That's right. We used to only go up to size four. I know. It just kept going and growing. Yeah. So when did you feel that same? call? Like, was it part of your childhood, obviously, from the thrifting and, you know, your mom always being, were you helping at the stores on the weekends? Yeah, she Speaker 3 (4:55) always gave my sister and I like a little part of the store. So I would invest my own money in the books, you know, and pick out the books and resell the books. And my sister did teddy bears. And so we were always kind of involved in the business. But when I went to Auburn University, I studied marketing and I was more the business side. not as much of the risk taker Speaker 4 (5:15) that Speaker 3 (5:16) my mother was. And my sister ended up, she ended up opening a boutique in Park City, Utah. But I really wanted to go in the corporate world. I don't know, I was drawn towards that. So that's why I went into pharmaceutical sales. I loved sales and marketing, but I really didn't want to go into the family business. That wasn't attractive to me at the time. Until I was in the corporate world and I did enjoy it. I had success there, but it's, you know. Very different. And then I gave birth to my first son. And just for fun, my mom would say, oh, what's Jack? You just come spend some time in the store. And it was like you said, it was just a happy place to be. I got to get dressed up, see other women. That's right. And it was just like a little freedom for me a couple days a week to just go help out in the store. And then, you know, I had my daughter 16 months later. And then they were getting a little bit older, started preschool. And then I really got into the business. And she was getting older and we kind of made a plan that she would start to phase out and I would continue to take on more and more responsibility until we Speaker 4 (6:15) are Speaker 3 (6:15) here now. And I basically run the whole store. We do all the buying together. Speaker 4 (6:20) I know. I love watching that from a distance on social media. Oh, Speaker 3 (6:24) yeah. Speaker 4 (6:24) That's Speaker 3 (6:24) the Speaker 4 (6:24) best part. All your buying trips. And it's always fascinated me how great of buyers that you really are. Aw, Speaker 2 (6:32) thank you. So buying trips, where are you going? We try Speaker 3 (6:37) to keep it diverse because... What do you mean by that? All over. So we try to do Europe twice a... Every two years, we try to do a trip to Europe. So we'll either do Playtime in Paris or the best show, I think, is Pity Bimbo in Florence, Italy. Oh, wow. And it doesn't always work to do a lot of the buying there because a lot of the brands aren't set up to import. to the U.S. Really? They don't have the landed prices. So it can be a little challenging. Right. But it gives us great inspiration. It just keeps us in tune into what's happening in children's fashion and gives us a global perspective. So those shows are just Speaker 2 (7:11) children's shows? Speaker 3 (7:12) Just children, yes. I Love Playtime and Pity Bimbo. Those are all children's brands. And we go to fashion shows. And it's fun and exciting, but also just keeps our finger on the pulse of what's happening in fashion. But twice a year, we do New York. Dallas, Atlanta, and now there's a new local market that's opened up in Boca Raton. Really? That Speaker 4 (7:33) we Speaker 3 (7:33) go to called The Forum Show. They're trying to grow it and build it. No Speaker 4 (7:36) way. Speaker 3 (7:36) Where does that get held? We Speaker 4 (7:38) also do the Miami Swim Speaker 3 (7:38) Show. Right now they're having, it's a one-day show at The Brick. So this is, I think, the third year, I want to say. Who knew? I hope it grows. Right. I hope it gets bigger and bigger. Well, and it's so amazing Speaker 4 (7:51) that by the time you joined Elegant Child. And your mom landed in Boca happens to be such a fashionable area and just such a draw on beauty and design and curated lifestyle, everything. I mean, like elegant child just fit right in there. It's been Speaker 3 (8:09) great. We feel like we've grown with our city. Right. You know, like you said, we started off just going to four. And then as our customer base grew, because as you guys have seen, it really changed. Yeah, we grow with our customers. But also the demographic of Boca Raton has just dramatically changed. Very young family. It used to be extremely seasonal. Mostly grandmothers were our demographic. And then the mother market really grew where people were buying their whole wardrobes instead of just picking up something here or there. So we went to more everyday clothing than just specialty. We still do that. We try to do that well in baby gifts. And you do. Yeah, but the buying is fun. And that's something I've learned from a little girl watching my mother do it. But our secret sauce. So there's four Speaker 2 (8:53) or five different shows in the United States that you go to. And you said twice a year. Twice Speaker 3 (8:58) a Speaker 2 (8:58) year. So each Speaker 3 (8:59) season. Speaker 2 (9:00) Each season. So that's like 10 trips? Yeah. Speaker 3 (9:03) So Speaker 2 (9:03) that's a fair amount of travel away from the store. Speaker 3 (9:06) It is. We try to. cram it all in. We usually are gone one, two nights max. Right. But that is very different. We see boutiques that will go to one market and spend a whole week there. Speaker 2 (9:16) Right. But Speaker 3 (9:17) I would say my mother and I are both very good decision makers, which helps us. And we always just buy what we both love. I Speaker 4 (9:26) was just going to say, what's your secret sauce? That's the secret. That's what you both love. What we both love. If one of us is like, eh. Speaker 3 (9:32) move on. And we don't dwell. We don't, you know, it's just like, do we love it? We buy it. If I love it, I'd be happy to give it as a gift. And I'm praying and hoping that other people share my same love, you know, and, you know, we do it fast. We don't. We are loyal to brands, but we don't hold ourselves hostage to a brand. So if a brand gets stale or they're not changing or bringing new things to market, we say, you know, we got to just write what we love. We got to stick to that. Don't force yourself to write something that you're not in love with. Do you Speaker 2 (10:07) go with an agenda or do you go with like a pre-determined, okay, we want to go out, we're looking for this, or are you going just kind of? Finding things, seeing things for the first time, saying, I want to buy this. We always hope to Speaker 3 (10:22) find something new. I was going Speaker 4 (10:23) to Speaker 3 (10:23) say, you guys always are. We're definitely hunting for new. Speaker 4 (10:24) I feel like you're constantly bringing new things in. Speaker 3 (10:28) That's true. We don't go with like, I would say what differentiates us from other boutiques as we've watched them buy is a lot of times they'll say. And many times it's buyers working for an owner. So they have to go buy. You have to spend $10,000 at this. And it's very number driven. We're not like that. So we will go. And we do have set brands that we know are big for us, like Mayer L and Angel's Face and Tutu Dumont. Certain brands, like we know there's a need. That brand is still hitting with our customers. We definitely want to set up an appointment at this showroom to see what they have, to see what they have for the season. Speaker 3 (11:07) The way we think about it is we need to make sure all of our categories are hit. So do we have enough boys dress shirts for holiday pictures or a special occasion? Is our baby department, do we have a wow baby gift that we know we can have for our customer? And do we have something that is under $50? You know, we try to make sure kind of each niche is hit. Each time. Yeah, we need to have fresh toys. We need to have casual wear. We need to have legging sets for girls. And we keep pictures of everything we buy. So if we get done with a couple markets and we still have one more, we're like, okay, we have to keep our eye out for Christmas pajamas. Yeah, we did not hit this yet. Speaker 2 (11:50) So when you're going to market and you're buying, are you buying a full set of inventory for the store? Or are you buying a few items, see how they do in the store? and then placing more orders for those as they sell. Speaker 3 (12:05) That's changed. So that's been very interesting to see how it's changed. When we began, there were two buying seasons. It would be in January for the next fall, and it would be in July for the next January. So you'd buy July. For the spring to arrive in January. And it was six months out. And you committed to all your goods six months in advance. It all would arrive between January and March. And that was it. And you just had to hope that you bought what would sell. And you bought Speaker 2 (12:35) enough. Speaker 3 (12:36) That's right. That's right. And I would say. Speaker 2 (12:39) I mean, that's a lot of that's a lot of pre-planning. It used to Speaker 3 (12:42) be 90 percent. You could not reorder. They cut to what you bought. Speaker 4 (12:47) But Speaker 3 (12:47) as the introduction of Instagram, social influencing trends changing rapidly. I'm sure you see that in design. Like you can have a trend that blows out because it got too big and it's overdone already. And you don't have a six month. And that's how women's clothing has been for years. So now the children's market is mimicking more of the women's buying where you have several different drops of a season. Now I'd say probably 50-50 we can get merchandise reordered. We know certain things that, okay, that's going to be a sellout for sure. And so we'll order a little more deep. But we really try to protect. I'll just say this. We're a brick and mortar store. Yes. That's what we want to do. We want to give great service in a brick and mortar environment. Small business mentality. Speaker 4 (13:37) It's like a culture almost. But Speaker 3 (13:39) don't you have an online presence? Speaker 2 (13:42) We Speaker 3 (13:42) do. We were forced. Thank God. You know, he took our story. What do Speaker 4 (13:47) you mean Speaker 3 (13:47) you Speaker 4 (13:47) were Speaker 3 (13:47) forced? Through COVID. Because in 2020, when we had to shut our doors, you know, we could not have customers in the store because of what the city. said. We had to keep our business going. So my mother and I would go in there. I'd do homeschooling with my kids in the morning and then go over with my mom. We'd go inside the store, started posting things on Instagram that we could ship out to other places around the world that were on lockdown or around the US. We came up with like creative art supply baskets, things to keep kids busy at home. And, you know, thankfully for us in Boca Raton, Just like our real estate market can attest to. You know, so much of New York and California was completely shut down for much longer than we were. And thankfully to DeSantis, our governor, he got us open very quickly. And we saw a lot of stores that we loved and worked alongside go completely out of business. Speaker 4 (14:38) But Speaker 3 (14:39) they ended up shopping with us through Instagram. Their customers ended up coming to us through Instagram. So we don't have an online shopping cart because we don't order deep. We usually order one of each style, and that's really to protect our customers. So when you go to the Boca's home, Speaker 4 (14:53) every little girl isn't going to show up in the same dress. You know, they're going to be unique, just like I want to be unique. Speaker 3 (14:59) It's like Tiffany is unique. You know, Speaker 4 (15:02) you Speaker 3 (15:02) don't want to have what everybody else is wearing. Speaker 4 (15:04) Yeah. Speaker 3 (15:05) So we have had to adjust a little bit, knowing, like, especially with our... Maybe our fall merchandise