By REID TUCKER
One of Kaitlyn Bailey’s favorite things is people-watching.
The customers that stop by her store, Katie Beth’s, downtown DeFuniak Springs’ high-end clothing boutique, sometimes don’t initially believe it when they find out Bailey, a 2014 high school graduate and a college freshman, is the owner.
“It’s fun to see people’s reactions,” she said. “I love to work here when I’m not at school, and when people ask me who owns the store and I reply with ‘me,’ they don’t take me seriously at first. But when they realize I’m actually the owner of the boutique, the look on their faces is priceless.”
Life hasn’t slowed down much for Bailey ever since she launched Katie Beth’s in September 2013 as a senior at Ponce de Leon High School. In addition to owning and running her own business, she holds down a full course load at Florida State University and a full-time job, while also participating in cheerleading at Tallahassee Community College. As if that wasn’t enough, Bailey is also the reigning Miss Walton County, so her schedule is, in a word, busy.
She wouldn’t have it any other way.
“My plate is full pretty much all the time,” Bailey said. “It’s fun to be so busy though. I get bored too easy. If I didn’t have something to do, I’d make something to do.”
Bailey came up with the idea for her business as a project to present at the annual meeting of the Future Business Leaders of America, a nationwide student organization aimed at getting young people involved in entrepreneurial pursuits. Bailey, who served as the FBLA state president at the time, is a self-described lifelong fan of shopping and fashion, and thus she decided opening a clothing boutique would be just the ticket. Though her plan was undoubtedly ambitious for someone so young, Bailey followed her passion and seized on the opportunity to start a business in a niche of its own.
“I realized that in Ponce de Leon nobody really had a store like the one I was thinking of,” Bailey said. “I thought about it and eventually I proposed to my parents that we open a clothing boutique. Being that this was the summer before my senior year of high school, this was a pretty big thing to ask.
“‘Hey, Mom and Dad, can I open a store?’ is not like ‘Can I have a puppy?’”
With some help from her family and friends, Katie Beth’s opened its doors first in Ponce de Leon and within a few months the store, which sells high-end apparel, accessories, skin care products and the like, had simply outgrown its original location. Katie Beth’s moved to downtown DeFuniak Springs last February, and business is booming. She hired more employees, increased operating hours, bought new merchandise, and even started offering in-store aesthetic spa treatments, and her customer base has expanded accordingly as word spread on Facebook and Instagram (her hashtag, for those interested, is #shopkatiebeths).
“It started with friends I made through FBLA telling other people about the store, but now we get people who come through here, say on their way to spring break at the beach,” Bailey said. “These are people from across the state and country, as well as a lot of local people who would otherwise have to go shopping in Destin or in the south end of the county. Now they can shop in their own hometown and get the same quality of clothing. It’s awesome to see that.”
Convenience aside, Bailey credits her business’ success with keeping prices reasonable all year round and with capturing the spirit of fashion in the area. It’s something she calls “Southern Apparel.” Katie Beth’s shelves are stocked with work-appropriate but still stylish clothes suitable for women across a large swatch of age ranges.
“There’s a different trend between here and other areas, even locally,” she said. “It’s a casual but still dressy type of mindset. It’s just how people dress here. You can’t wear the same thing you’d wear to the beach when you work at a bank or in an office, or when you’re in high school. We have middle schoolers wearing our clothes and we have senior citizens wearing our clothes. Truly, it’s a wide variety of customers that we have.”
Nowadays, though serving state secretary for Phi Beta Lambda, the college equivalent of the FBLA, and an active member of the Walton Area Chamber of Commerce and DeFuniak Springs Business and Professional Association, Bailey splits her time between Tallahassee and DeFuniak, working at the store whenever she can. As busy as she is, Bailey said Katie Beth’s would not be a success if it weren’t for help from her friends Jenny “JJ” Barton, who runs the store as manager and aesthetician, and Karlie McDonald, who assists customers and works as a clerk. The business is also a family affair, with Bailey’s parents and sister helping out too, as the ladies help her decide on merchandise and travel to market events together, while she and her father do all the woodworking for the store’s custom furniture and display pieces.
“I couldn’t have done this without my family’s help,” Bailey said. “I had a crazy idea and they were behind me all the way.”
Looking to the future, Bailey is going to keep on pursuing her studies in business management and marketing, but she also has big plans for Katie Beth’s, given the rapidity with which the store has grown in the short time it’s been open. Though nothing has been firmly decided yet, she said she’d like to see another Katie Beth’s location open elsewhere in the county, and sooner rather than later, though certainly within the next five years or so. No matter what is in store for the young entrepreneur, at the center of it will remain the enjoyment she finds in fashion and sharing it with others.
“It’s so much fun, not only shop and pick out clothes for yourself, but also to have an impact on what other people are going to want to wear,” Bailey said. “To have an influence on what people wear and on fashion in our area is so cool. It’s what I love to do.”
