Oral History Program Carrie Vondrus Interviewed by Melina Myers 21 March 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Carrie Vondrus Interviewed by Melina Myers 21 March 2017 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Vondrus, Carrie, an oral history by Melina Myers, 21 March 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral interview with Carrie Vondrus. It was conducted on March 21, 2017 and concerns her recollections and experiences as a small business owner. The interviewer is Melina Myers. MM: Ok, so this is an oral history interview with Carrie Vondrus, conducted by Melina Myers on March 21st at 6:10 in Carrie's shop. In this interview Carrie discusses her recollections and experiences as a small business owner. Ok, so the first question, please start by telling us about your background, childhood, teen years, where you grew up, hobbies, family, values, and education. CV: I grew up in Cerritos California. I was born in 1964. I grew up to 32 years there and then we eventually moved to northern Utah. Growing up was just it was just an Ozzie and Harriet life. My parents are still married. They are one of the few parents out there that are still together. I graduated from Arteaga High School back in ‘81 and I started college but did not finish it. And shortly after I decided to leave college, it wasn't quite perfect for me. I ended up in the workforce working at Parker Hannifin Aerospace company in Irvine, California, and that's where I met my husband of now 28 years. About four years after we got married, we had a house in Laguna Niguel, and also a ranch in Santa Margarita, California. The aerospace company decided they were going to split and the commercial was going to come up here to the Ogden Industrial Park, and the military was going to stay down in California. And I knew-- my husband and I both came from a family that was very close knit. His parents are still married after 65 years, my parents are still married after 52 years, and we had the luxury of having at home with parents. Actually, both of our parents had their own businesses and decided that that was a way to go because they could come and go pretty much as they 1 pleased, with his sister and himself and then my sister and I. And so we knew that we wanted to do that with our kids, but unfortunately being in Southern California it's not very easy on your budget to do that. So we made the decision to leave all of our family in California and come out so that he could work at Harper Hannifin in Ogden, and I was able to continue to stay home and raise our--at that time two sons. And then when we moved out here, I was 7 months pregnant with our third son that was born out here. And because we also have a love of skiing, we decided-- at that time my husband was doing his master’s, so he had his undergrad and back in 2007 got his master's degree, but we wanted to raise our children on skis because we did a lot skiing ourselves. And the easiest way to do that was to become an ENT and get on the ski patrol out here. Since he was doing his master’s it wasn't really feasible for him to go and take the classes to become a ski patroller, a professional ski patroller, so I decided that I would do it, and I did that. So I was a professional ski patroller out at Powder Mountain ski resort for 14 years. I went up the ranks as high as a woman typically ever gets, which is Outdoor Emergency Care Supervisor, which meant I was the head of the medical division part of national ski patrol for the Intermountain Division. That incorporates 27 ski resorts up into Idaho, all of Utah, and then into Elko, Nevada. Anybody that wanted to become a ski patroller had to go through me. So it was a lot of fun. We did it for, like I said, 14 years. My husband did it for five, and I always told myself I was not going to be that ski patroller that couldn't physically do the job anymore because we do age and it is a very physical job. So I decided at about 46 years old to hang up my skis and after a couple of years of not knowing what I was going to do -- because at that point, our children were grown and doing their own thing. They really didn't need a mom at home anymore. I 2 decided to open up Endless Indulgence Retro Wear and it, like everything else, comes out of necessity. If you look back at my high school graduation pictures, I was wearing what, back then, would have been vintage or retro. I actually carry a dress in the shop right now that looks very similar to what I wore for graduation and I just found for me that that type of clothing fit my body better. I am not a size 2 I am a size 12-14 in modern day, size 18-20 in vintage clothing, and I could never find things at the malls that fit my body well. It was very discouraging, but I always knew that I could go back and I could wear the retro clothing and it always fit me really, really well. So at one point in my life I finally just kind of resolved myself to the fact that I'm going to have to buy online if I could find it, do Ebay, drive down to southern California because it was easier to find down there, or Las Vegas to find it. And quite honestly, I think Rich got tired of doing that and me complaining whenever I did mail order and things didn't fit. So he had said to me, he says, “You know, why don't you look into selling the clothing?” And I thought, “Okay, well I can reinvent myself again. Let's do this!” And I got on the phone and I started talking to people that I admired and wore their brand. So I started talking to some of those people and the brick wall that I ran up against was, at that time, I didn't have a brick and mortar shop, mainly because of the fact that I didn't want to just open a shop and assume people would come. I didn't know if it would fly in Utah. And so ultimately I decided to see if I could get one company that would back me, and I did. It was Betty Page Clothing. A lot of girls now might know it as Tatiana. But Betty Page Clothing, unbeknownst to me, had their own reason for letting me get an account with them which affected us tremendously about a year and a half later. But they gave me an account, and so ultimately we actually started going from car show to car show every Friday and 3 every Saturday and Sunday with everything in a trailer set up. Rich made a dressing room and that's how we started out, just getting this really small following. I pulled money out of our savings. I never did get a business loan. To this day I still don't have a business loan, and so I started very, very, very small, much smaller than most folks have any idea when they walk in here. They just assume that I opened up and this is what I look like. So we did that for about six months or so, and there was a small company over on 24th Street that decided that she needed help with the rent and wanted to know if I wanted to rent a small space in there. So I thought, “Well, okay.” And we paid $300 a month, which just killed me. I thought that was so much money. I was so scared. So we did that and after a few months we both knew that we wanted to move onto 25th Street. That was the feeling that I had, that if I was going to do anything, this is where I was going to be. Plus we just live in North Ogden so it's very close by, and at that time I did still have a junior in high school and a senior in high school and both of them played sports, and in our family, family always comes first. So I wanted to be close enough that I could shut the shop down and I could go to Friday night football and go watch the boys play or go to track or whatever. And I just hoped and prayed that my clientele would feel the same way that I did and they wouldn't be upset that I would always close an hour or two early on a Friday night for Friday night lights. I think because we are so family oriented-- and at any given time you will see any of my four kids in here, my 3 sons and my new daughter in law. I'm so excited for her. You'll come in here and you'll see them and they'll just be hanging out and stuff. So for me to be able to go from over there to onto 25th Street we had a smaller location, and on 25th it was about 385 square feet. And in that 385 square feet, we had two dressing rooms and kind of a back room. So if 4 you got three people in there, it was claustrophobic. After about four months of that we knew this was not going to work and we started looking on the street and putting the word out on the street that we were looking for a larger location. We thought we had one and unfortunately it was one of the dilapidated buildings, and once the building owner found out what it was going to cost to bring it up to code three weeks before we were supposed to get the paperwork and all that, he backed out. And in the mean time I had already given notice to the spot that we were at and they were not going to let me back in. So I mentally got prepared that I was going to move back home and it was fun but it was over. And all of a sudden, I get a phone call from the lady that was in this space here, and she said, “Carrie, I can't keep the space. My health is failing. Would you be interested in it?” Well, going from 385 square feet to 2000 square feet is enough of a shocker but you add that price tag on top of it… That was a really scary moment, really scary. And so I came over and talked to her and she asked me if I would buy her inventory, which I said I would not because I didn't go into debt for my business. I didn't have the money to buy her out of her inventory and it was something I knew wouldn't work for us anyhow. So ultimately, I said “I can't do that but I can probably get you out of your lease. What do you owe?” She signed a five-year lease and she was four months into it. So that was one of those things that I said, “You know, unless you're a restaurant, unless you had one heck of a following, I would never encourage anybody to sign a five-year lease right out of the get-go, especially retail.” Retail is very finicky. When it comes to restaurants most people all want to go out to eat at some point or another. Retail is a luxury. It is 100% a luxury. It's a want, it's not a need. And so we sat down and I said, “I can't do that, but I got with the property manager and looking at it, we can do two 5 years with two one-year options, meaning we can get out of it after two years if we need to, but the rent won't go up if we decide to stay on.” They agreed and we had exactly, to the day of when we had to be out of there, we were in here. On a snowy January day, everybody --- all of our friends -- were carrying mannequins down the street and clothing during a snow storm, brought everything in here. We got the keys two days prior. I got the keys, I walked in, I sat down on the floor in an empty place, and I cried because I didn't know what I thought I was doing. I didn't know how I was going to fill this place up. I just know in my case that the good Lord wants me here to do what we are doing. There have been a lot of times that I'm like, “We should not have made this month,” for whatever reason, or something. The fact that this opened up… It was Him. It wasn't me. So it was kind of crazy. To go back to the very beginning, when we had started this, just prior to this I had gotten into a really bad trucking accident, and I keep looking back at that because if it wasn't for that, I would not have said, “You know what? You've gotta do it, because tomorrow is not guaranteed.” And this was one of those things that I was like, “You know what? I'm supposed to do something, because I should have been killed.” No two ways about it. So yeah, I think from that, and having you girls here, it was a life saver for me. I know a lot of the ladies call this their ‘happy place’ and I'm thinking that that's probably where it all came from. Not to get too deep, but I guess I'm getting deep. Like I said, retail is rough. Some Love Sick just opened up not all that long ago, I want to say a year and a half ago, and they are closing and they are a chain. You've got Macy's that's closing, 150 stores of JCP's is closing. I think a lot of that was, in Love Sick's case, probably opening too many stores too quickly. I like to think that I'm pretty humble and coming from this big to where we are now, 6 I don't take it for granted. We work very hard. We work, I work, very very long hours. I even teased myself, like “What was I thinking?” Because I've never worked so hard in my life. As a ski patroller I worked physically very, very hard, but in here it's a lot of hours, it's constant worry about how much is going out versus how much is coming in. And “Okay, I get it, I have to get new inventory for this. I have to allocate amounts for this and that and everything else, and pay the rent and the utilities.” I tried having an employee. Employees are really, really tough, especially whenever you are a small business like I am, in the sense that I am very active in my business and it's hard to have people in that since they didn't build it. It's not their business. They don't have that stake in there. And it's expensive, unfortunately. It's really expensive. It's expensive to pay myself, and I just started paying myself a year ago because my tax gal said, “You have to start paying yourself now.” Up until this point she jokingly would tell me, “You don't want to know what you make, because you don't make much. You make way under what minimum wage is.” But again, you do it. You do a small business like this for the love of it. And yes, I do get to call my own hours, like we were talking earlier. A very close friend of mine passed away so I had that luxury that I could say, “You know what? We're not going to open up at 11 o’ clock today. I'm not going open until 3 o'clock.” Because I want to be there with them, you know? And yes we did come in but the really cool thing about it is the minute we open the doors so many of you regular girls came walking in the door just to come in and give me a hug. Because I didn't put a big thing out on social media, but I did put a thing out because you have to tell people and I did have a sign on the door saying, you know, “This is what's going on and we're not open.” Those relationships you don't get in the corporate world, and that's the coolest thing of it. 7 I always tell people, “No, I'm not going to make a million dollars.” Rich likes to think we are. But I get a dress whenever I want and I get to be around ladies that to me are the most empowering. And I don't even like to use that word anymore; just strong women. Just strong, outgoing women. Especially in my case where they want to wear this type of clothing, you have to be a strong woman to do it because you're gonna get looks and you have to feel comfortable in your own skin in order to do that. So I feel like all the ladies that I have come in here are unusually strong women that are like, “You know what? I feel good. I know I look good. My husband thinks I look great. That's all that matters.” And you glow. MM: Yes that is that is perfect! What are your core values? CV: My core value number one is family. God first, family second. Customer service in the industry is huge for me. And it's funny because I have a story: years and years and years ago, my mother had back surgery and I remember she had to be to a wedding and was able to go. She had a hospital bed in our living room and I remember Nordstrom pulling in, a van. And they came in and they had probably had 40 dresses, stockings, shoes, jewelry, everything you can think of. And they came in, they helped my mom dress, and ultimately, long story short, she picked out a dress, I believe some stockings, and some earrings, and they left. My mom paid for them. And I said to my mom, “Are we rich?” And she looked at me and she said, “Well no, but why are you asking me that?” And I said, “Well, they just came here and you just-- and they—” And she said, “No, it's a service that they offer. It doesn't cost any more. It's their customer service.” I was like, “Wow. That's something else.” Many years later Matthew was 8 born, our oldest boy that is now going on 27. He's born and while he was inside of me, his feet kind of turned in, not quite pigeon toed but the arches were more turning in. And like any good parents, scared parents, you take them to the doctors and they look at him and they say, “Oh, yeah, he's going to need braces on his feet” and stuff. And I'm thinking the worst. And we’re brand new parents, scared to death. They said, “We'll give you a prescription to go get these shoes,” and I said, “Alright, fine. Write me the prescription.” It was to Nordstrom again. And I thought to myself, “Okay, what's going on? What's this going to cost us? Is our insurance going to help cover any of this or that?” And again, as new parents, “Well, we won't eat next month. We'll just have to pay for this for our child.” And we got in there, we gave the sales guy the prescription, and he says, “Oh yeah, okay.” He goes in the back and comes back with this little box with these little shoes in there. And he says, “Okay, now this is how you put them on his feet, and whenever his toe gets to this point, then you come back in and we'll give you new ones and you give those ones back.” And I said, “Okay, big question: what's it going to cost?” And he says, “Oh, this doesn't cost anything. This is a service. It's a part of our customer service. The founder of the company had a child that needed braces on their feet and he swore that no other child was going to have to worry about whether the parents were going to put food on the table or if they were going to do this.” So that was another thing that stuck in head. And again, I always swore if I ever had my own business, customer service was going to absolutely be number one. So here we are now and that is still my number one goal, customer service for everyone in here. I will stay later, I will open earlier, I will special order in if I can special order in. I just recently sold a blouse that I had 9 bought for myself but one of my girls came in and was like, “I need a blouse.” And I knew exactly what she needed and it just so happened that I had just ordered it for myself. FedEx came in while she was here and I think she thought I was joking. I opened up the box and there was one blouse and that was mine. I knew it would fit her and I knew it would be perfect so I sold her mine and she was floored by that. But you treat people the way you would want to be treated. If you take care of your customers, they will always take care of you. They won't mind if you have to close early because something has happened. Family things? They won't mind. They'll stick up for you in the shop, whenever somebody in the shop is giving you a hard time -- because it does happen. But customer service the way it used, when you come in and it's an experience and you feel valued because you are valued when you come in. That, to me, hopefully will keep someone in business for a very long time through hard times. When we started this-- I started in 2011, which wasn't the best time to start because we were really right in the middle of the recession and all of that, and I did lay in bed and cry. And I thought, “What are you thinking? People aren't spending money right now.” But I think because I open up to my girls and they know my life and I'll be the first to tell you things that don't work for me, that how I hide the things that I don't like or how we work with things that you don't care for on your body or self-image or whatever-- I think that that's where people come in and are like, “This is kind of a happy place.” It's more than just coming in and buying a dress because you can do that anywhere. You really can. But as long as my gals -- we do sell men's stuff too, but I've had a couple of my clients that I've seen since the minute they were diagnosed with breast cancer all the way through working with their bodies as they've changed, to calling clear. And I just had another one of my girls, a 10 beautiful young girl probably about the same age you are, who was just diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. So one of the first things I want to do is I want her to know that she is not alone. I have talked to my girls that have gone through it already and asked them, “You guys want to get together? Let’s meet at the shop, let's talk. You have a support system here.” We have our El-Gal robes that I have up there. I always make sure I send one off to them. And like, in Tiffany's case, I know she's going to beat it cause there's no option. She's gonna beat it. But I sent off one of the robes to her and said, “Just to let you know, this is keeping you warm. This is a hug from all of us girls at El, not from me. It's for all of us girls that are here because none of us want any one we know or don't know to go through something like that.” So all of those little things, I think. When you come in I’ll hear people say to me, “This is kind of like a house in here.” I said, “It is like a house. I live here. I'm here 10 hours a day. I'm here more than I am at my home.” So yeah, it is. I want it to be like a house where people want to come in and have a glass of wine or a bottle of water and sit and visit, and if you want to get a dress, great! I'm here to get you zipped up in it but that's not the whole reason. MM: Okay great, so next question: name a person who has a tremendous impact on you as a leader? CV: God... Alex Montanez that owns Rovali's up the street. He's one; I get to bounce a lot of things off of him. I was very fortunate very early on to meet a gal named Audrey, and she owns Audrey Kay down in Burbank, a store very similar to mine. I had a lot of early bouncing off of her. But I would say on a daily basis Alex. He's a great source of information. And then, like I said, I ask all the time, “Am I doing it right? If you know, tell me if I'm doing -- guide me in a different direction or 11 something. But if I'm doing it right I'm assuming we'll keep going as usually.” MM: Very cool. What do you see as the biggest challenge of being a women leader in northern Utah? CV: Being taken seriously, unfortunately. We had contacted a person in regards to having concealed carry classes in our shop. I have a lot of ladies that would like to do that but want to do it in a familiar setting for themselves. And so I talked to a few ladies and when I called the gentleman in regards to doing it, it was very apparent that he just thought I was some, you know, female that didn't know anything. You get that gut feeling that he's not really taking you seriously. And it was very, very frustrating because of that. But yeah, being taken seriously, especially if you tell them, “I have a dress shop.” I had someone in earlier in the week that came in and was laughing and said, “This place is hilarious.” It was a gentleman and he was very condescending. And so my comeback to him was, “I'm laughing all the way to the bank.” Not really, but that was my little way of coming back and saying, “You know what? You're kind of rude.” So yeah, I would say being taken seriously is probably the most frustrating thing about it. I did not finish college, I do not have a degree, but I was gifted with ridiculous amounts of common sense: don't spend more than you have in your personal life or in a business. To this day I own everything in here, literally. I only use my debit card, I never use a credit card, so if I don't have money in the bank or if I'm short or if I'm feeling like, “Oh, I've got to balance this and this and this.” I'm very forward with my suppliers and they seem to really like it. I've got a really great rapport with all of our suppliers, and we’re very fortunate that way, where I'll say, “You know what, Katie? I can't take it right now but let me get through the weekend, let's get the weekend receipts in there, and then I'll call you for what I can take.” 12 “Okay, Carrie, not a problem.” And it's been that way since day one. I communicate well with them. I don't tell them what's in my bank account, but I tell them exactly where I'm at and they come back and they’re like, “Not a problem.” I've never ever gone back on any of my suppliers to say, “Oh, I can't take that, I ordered too much. I don't have the money.” Because I wouldn't want someone doing that to me. So sometimes I'm like, “Oh, may take just a few more days” or “Give me a week and a half, we have this coming up and I'm allocating money for this (whatever it is) event.” “Okay, Carrie, not a problem.” Because I've always followed through. So when I say I own everything in the shop, I really do own everything in the shop. I don't do Net30. I don't do Net60. And again, for me, it's peace of mind that I don't have to worry about paying someone because here my Net30 is coming up. I would rather own it and sit on it and figure out how I'm going to sell it than worry about selling it so I can pay them in thirty days. So it may not be the best situation as far as building all this credit and a business and all that. I'm not looking to expand to do three and four other stores or something like that. I don't need to worry about that kind of credit. I am fortunate that my name is so well known out there and the way that we do business that I literally have got companies coming to me and saying, “Will you carry our stuff?” because they know my history. When we go to market , they're all friends, they all talk and they'll be the first to say to another one of the suppliers, “Oh, she's a dead beat.” I just I had one today say, “Hey Carrie, you've got stuff ready from London.” “Great, how much is it?” That's one thing I do ask them, is do not ever charge my card without 13 calling me first to tell me what the amount is. And you know, “Oh, this is X amount.” “Okay, sounds great. Get it in the mail, you've got my card.” So... MM: Awesome. Okay, we're going to move on to the final question: what advice would you give emerging women leaders in order to be successful? CV: Take your time. Do your homework. Know your demographics on whatever it is that you’re looking to do, whether you’re testing the waters to see if a certain clothing line is going to run or you want to start a food truck or any of that. Test know your demographics. Look around. Go with your gut, follow your gut, because it never lies. If something doesn't feel right, it's not right. Be patient, which I have to tell myself a lot. Don't overextend, and you've heard me say it in here, don't ever overextend your budget because it's not worth the sleepless nights at all. Enjoy what you do, make it a passion because if it isn't a passion, it becomes a job, and when it becomes a job, quit and go get a job where you don't have to think about when you can walk out the door at 5 o'clock, because your own business can consume your life. I've had those times where my own kids have had to say, “Mom, get off your phone,” because in my case I have suppliers in Australia, Sweden, and London. Just recently, Rich and I were grocery shopping, and half the time I was going back and forth with a gal in Australia. It gets very wearing after a while, especially on your family. Your family is number one. They are always going to be there. The business is not. So make sure it doesn't over run your life, but make sure that it is something that you are very passionate about and you love to do. I'm very fortunate to be able to do that and I am passionate about it and I do love what I do. It's just putting a dress on a girl. Like I tell my ladies, “I don't make the dresses, I'm just here to get you zipped into 14 them and tell you if it's going to work on you or not.” Be honest at everything that you do and remember karma is a real thing. We've been very, very blessed. I don't know why, but places like Channel 2 -- I've never paid to be on there and we're on an average of four times a year. It's the relationships that you build and surround yourself with, people that are going to support you, that aren't just going to free-ride off you, because it happens. Everybody wants to be there whenever you're successful, but nobody wants to be there when you're building it or when things aren't going so well. I've experienced that and it's heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking. So keep your family close because you're going to need them for those times when you're celebrating and those times when you just don't feel like you can do it anymore. MM: Thank you for sharing your memories with us. We appreciate you letting us come to visit with you and speaking with us. CV: Any time, any time. 15