Trendy Twist Boutique

Downtown Florence recently launched a series of summer stories featuring and highlighting the unique people who help make Downtown Florence such a vibrant and special place. See our story below:

“I was born and raised in Florence, South Carolina. I attended Francis Marion University and majored in finance. Shortly after college, I moved to Atlanta to pursue a big career in the big city. I worked at UPS corporate for around seven years before deciding to come back to Florence to be closer to my family. I was afforded an opportunity to work in a local school district as the finance director, and I’ve been there ever since, helping students.But my passion has always been fashion.Let me tell you, on Saturdays, it was my mom’s and my routine to get up, do our chores, and by noon we were having lunch and shopping. This was our Saturday ritual. Since I was small, I was boutique shopping with mom. We’d map out new boutiques in the small towns around Florence using the old She Magazine and take off every Saturday to find new places. We came to Downtown Florence and shopped at Samra’s and Rambo’s. My dad always wanted to ensure I had the best shoes possible. I never wore anything out of the local big box stores growing up, so it was engrained in me from a young age to value small businesses and unique local shopping. As I grew up, I really discovered a love of fashion and figured out how to pair high and lower end things together to create unique looks.When Downtown Florence started to decline, I was already living in Atlanta, and coming home made me sad—a place that I grew up in just fizzling out. But, it’s won my heart to see businesses coming back in, because I’ve had the experience of leaving Florence and coming back. I want everyone in our community to be able to experience the shopping and dining of bigger places like Charlotte or Atlanta. I realized that working locally, especially in the school district, some people may never leave this area. To bring a piece of other cities here, so that people can experience that, is really special.And that’s what I think we’ve brought to Trendy Twist.When my mom retired from GE, we saw an opportunity for her to actually fulfill a dream of hers—to open a women’s boutique. The opportunity came, and I said, ‘Mom, are you ready?’ and she was. So I told her I’d be her silent partner, but I haven’t been so silent.Within the boutique, I do everything on the budgeting and finance side, working with vendors, filing taxes, doing all the reporting, and making sure our customers get the best deal and service. We’re not only downtown, we’re also online, so I do everything from managing the website to answering questions the customers might have. We get a lot of direct messaging about what we sell, so I manage all of that through a messenger app, and yes, sometimes I’m even up at 2:30 in the morning answering questions while ladies shop in the middle of the night. We actually serve customers through our website from across the US and internationally. We work hard to get our brand out constantly, be on social media, and let people know what we have to offer. When we started this business, I had no idea how to create or manage a website, but my cousin helped us initially get our first one up and running. Working with my mom has been the best thing ever. She’s the best partner and we’re so much more alike than not. We’re both Geminis, so sometimes we butt heads, but we love each other so much. We do have our differences sometimes within the business, but we always find common ground and we both compromise. We’re both headstrong, but at the end of the day, our customers are our focus, so we do what’s best for the business. We inspire each other. Sometimes she’ll have an idea and I’ll run with it, sometimes I’ll have an idea and she’ll run with it. Together we weathered the storm economically through the pandemic. On days when we want to give up, we have that one customer who comes in, or we have a big sale that day, and that keeps us going. We know that God is in our business, so we’re not by ourselves. We used to be located off Cashua Drive in Florence, where we had customers who found us by driving by or living around us. But we built notoriety through our social media platform, so people found us from North Carolina, Columbia, and others, and it became about building our brand regardless of our former tough location. When we first started out, we went to the Atlanta Market, and we didn’t know what to expect. We thought we could just go in and buy what we wanted and leave. Sure, there are some ready to wear items, but we learned we had to make appointments and Mr. Freddie Simon gave us our first shot. He carries the brands Maggie London and Donna Morgan out of New York. So here we are, with no idea how this process works, no business lines of credit or anything, but he saw us as two women trying to break into the industry and he gave us our first opportunity to sell his products. So we carry Ivy Jane and Uncle Frank, a huge line out of Texas, and we get a lot of customers who are looking for that brand. And our business grew from there, and we ventured out into Sanctuary Clothing, which is carried by big department stores like Nordstrom and some high end Belk models. If you build a great brand, people will find you. Being downtown has made a huge difference in our sales. They’ve actually doubled since we’ve been downtown. We get a lot of travelers coming through staying at the downtown hotels and we’ve had customers from as far away as New Hampshire down to Miami, Florida. They always describe Florence as their stopping point. And the hotels have been so good to us, recommending our business to their guests. It’s been a great transition for us, a great partnership with other local businesses cross promoting us and helping us grow our business. Before we came into our space, MiLadies 182 was here. When owners Charlene, Doris, and Starlee were ready to retire from retail, they worked with us on one very specific caveat. Charlene said, ‘just do us one favor and carry our Joseph Ribkoff line.’ So we made that promise and were able to move into this space. The Joseph Ribkoff line is based out of Canada and it’s a big seller for our ladies who have more formal functions to attend, and we can also custom order pieces from their collection. Everything we carry can transition from day to night and travels well. I actually wear everything we sell myself. If you’re a busy person like me, always on the go, it’s nice to have pieces you can pull out of the closet without ironing and head to work or an event.We try our best to find clothing that’s going to last—not just one season or five years, we want the clothing we sell to last twenty plus years. We see fashion as an investment. You should be able to buy a piece and pass it down to family or send it for consignment when you’re ready to get something new. We always choose pieces that are timeless and have value beyond what the big box stores offer.I have a passion for what I do. Every day I wake up and do it all over again.I’ll never forget the night before we opened downtown, my mom and I were in the store working on final touches, and a lady and her husband were walking back and forth in front of our window and finally, she opened the door and asked if she could come in.We told her we were opening the next day, but then she said she and her husband were leaving the next day, so we told her she could come in. I had just gotten the register up in the nick of time!She picked this item and that, and she bought almost $1,000 worth of clothing that night. And then she and her husband prayed with us, prayed over our store, prayed for our success. And her husband gave us our first twenty dollars that we have framed in our shop. I’ll never forget those people.Mom and I cried together and said, oh, this is where we’re supposed to be.”- Shereca Anderson, co-owner of Trendy Twist Boutique