Entrepreneur
Sally Hilkene Fillmore
Company Information
Churchill
5240 Belinder Rd.
Fairway, KS 66205
(913) 262-5240
www.shopatchurchill.com
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www.facebook.com/
shopatchurchill
@shop_CHURCHILL
Type of Business Retail
Year Founded 2003
Employees 5
Keys to success
“Stay true to your vision. I’ve developed a brand, and I stay true to it.” -Sally Hilkene
FillmoreThe interior of Churchill, an eclectic boutique in Fairway, brings to mind Aladdin’s Cave. The shop is a treasure trove filled with jewelry, statuettes, paintings, antiques, scarves, hats, dresses, sweaters, new, vintage, expensive, affordable—literally, everywhere you look.
It can be overwhelming. But whether you know exactly what you want, or have no idea, whether your budget is closer to the $25 sponge coral bracelet or the $250,000 Lorraine Schwartz diamond flower necklace, owner Sally Hilkene Fillmore and her team will help you discover the perfect treasure.
So, how does a Kansas City hometown girl end up owning a boutique that rivals the best of New York or Paris and draws international designers, fashionistas, celebrities and global business leaders?
Designing a Business
Hilkene grew up among entrepreneurs: her father owned the Spot Shot brand of carpet cleaners. Hilkene and former husband bought the business from her parents in 1981 and grew it from $250,000 annual sales to approximately $36 million before selling to WD-40 in 2002.
Even before her ownership of the family business, however, Hilkene had started on her own road to being an entrepreneur. After earning degrees at the University of Kansas in art history and metalsmithing/jewelry design, and following an apprenticeship with Gardiner Rapelye, Hilkene began an interior design business and spent the next 20-some years building a reputation as a creative and impeccable designer.
During those years, Hilkene struggled to find pieces in the local market to fulfill her design vision. She often had to travel to L.A., or Dallas or New York to find just the right items for her clients. So, she decided to open a store that would appeal to local interior designers, but the concept quickly became more than that.
“I also was a jewelry designer. I thought I could fuse several concepts together, which would be antique jewelry along with the antiques, along with jewelry I made, with the intent that it would grow into a small, edgier store than Kansas City typically had,” Hilkene said.
“It was a way to make things accessible here in Kansas City.”
Churchill (a family name) was born in December 2003 at the Crestwood Shops in Brookside. A couple of years later, looking to expand, Hilkene bought the former Lucy Lynn Bakery building and, after extensive renovation, Churchill moved to Fairway in 2006.
Treasure Hunting
Hilkene hasn’t had trouble filling the 12,000 square foot space with unique and worldly treasures. There is an abundance of riches, which would take days to fully explore.
“To me, this is an ADHD store,” she said. “You start looking at one thing, and your eye goes off to something else.”
The shop also is unusual in how merchandise is displayed. Most items are easily accessible to feel, touch and hold. That “tactile experience,” Hilkene notes, is critical to many customers in fully appreciating the quality of Churchill’s inventory.
Jewelry is draped on statuettes, which, by the way, are for sale too. In the spirit of marrying her backgrounds in jewelry and interior design, antiques for sale are used to display other pieces of inventory.
Look around and you are unlikely to see the same item twice. Hilkene typically purchases in quantities of only one or two. More importantly for Hilkene, if an item is in Churchill it probably isn’t anywhere else in Kansas City. She works hard to ensure exclusivity.
Most small businesses reflect the personality of the owner, and this is definitely true of Churchill, where Hilkene does all the buying of inventory.
“Business needs to be an expression of your own personality and recognition of your best skill set,” she said. Hilkene said the items she buys reflect her own life experiences and her upbringing, and she often chooses items that trigger a memory for her.
“I don’t follow trends. When I trust my eye, it tends to be what the next trend is. I gamble. Not all of it becomes ‘the next best thing,’ but a lot of it does.”
Where does Hilkene find all the treasures she sells? In addition to her own jewelry designs—Churchill’s Private Label—she goes on buying trips to Europe and attends industry shows in the United States.
Interestingly, Hilkene said the United States is the best source even for European goods.
“A lot of it is made in Europe; but to buy it, the best shows are in the U.S.,” she said. “I’ve done the Premiere Classe in Paris, but I think New York, L.A., and Las Vegas are much better.”
Buying Into the Future
When buying inventory, Hilkene is really doing so for two different markets: Kansas City and for online customers. With the local store, she evaluates past sales and is much more conscious of price points and providing a range from affordable to high end.
Online sales have expanded her market opportunities during the down economy, enabling her to reach more national and international buyers. “With the Web sales,” Hilkene said, “I’m able to trust my eye and buy whatever I like, because some places we can reach through ShopAtChurchill.com haven’t been as impacted by the recession.”
“From a business standpoint, nobody in retail ever imagined the destruction the recession would cause. I’m sure we were hit equally as bad as others. It has just made us work harder on our website to find new people seeking unique items of top-notch craftsmanship,” she said.
As in all retail businesses, not everything Hilkene buys for her shop strikes the fancy of local customers, so the broader customer base provided by the Web helps her reach the right customers for those items.
Internet sales last year made up about 30 percent of Churchill’s business, and that continues to grow. Hilkene expects to see it climb to 50 percent.
“From a personal standpoint, I could never have imagined the scope of where Churchill has come. From a tiny hole in the wall in Crestwood, to a nationally known business in Fairway, Kansas, serving the entire world through the World Wide Web, and winning Top Three Coolest Stores in America, among other honors.” Hilkene said.
In addition to the location in Fairway, Churchill was part of the Country Club Plaza for about a year and a half. Churchill opened in the Balcony Building in December 2009. Hilkene would like to have stayed, but while they were there, Plaza management announced the building would be demolished to make way for the new Polsinelli Shughart high rise.
Now, Hilkene has turned her expansion focus outside of Kansas City. Churchill has had suitors from upscale shopping centers across the country, particularly after the shop was voted one of the top three coolest stores in America by INSTORE magazine. Hilkene is looking westward, considering opening a store in Montecito, Calif., in Santa Barbara County. The location isn’t a coincidence, it’s close to another very important part of her life—two of her kids. Her husband, Art Fillmore, an attorney, also has clients in the area and travels there regularly. Montecito also made sense from a business perspective.
“Customers say the store is a shopping destination. I think matching that with being near a place people vacation—where they have a ‘holiday’ mentality—will be good for sales,” Hilkene said.
She said three five-star hotels serve the Montecito area and the people who travel there have high discretionary incomes.
“You know when you travel, you spend more freely—you think more about getting something to remind you of that great vacation experience.”
While making plans for a potential store in Montecito, Hilkene admits that the future of Churchill—and similar boutiques—is increasingly on the Web. She is working to expand that part of her business through the Churchill website and social media, but is still firmly committed to the Kansas City market. Hilkene understands the allure of people saying “I bought this in LA, New York, or Paris,” but she is a big advocate of shopping locally when the same quality can be bought at local shops and build that same cachet for KC.
“I would love for them to brag about KC and say, ‘Oh! This little thing?? I got this in Kansas City!”
David Day is executive editor for Thinking Bigger Business magazine. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it