Something for Everyone

Small Business Focus

Millie & Co. Mercantile

By Jay Carmen

You can’t walk into Jana Vaughan’s shop and not smile.

Jana is the owner of Millie & Co. Mercantile, a home decor shop she opened in 2016 in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. The store offers authentic and repurposed antiques, apparel, and gifts for customers of all ages.

Jana is a recent transplant from the state of Virginia where she worked for 15 years in alumni development and special events at a private military academy. She brought that experience with her when she moved to the Greater Cincinnati area in 2012 to take a position in the development department at Northern Kentucky University. She lived on the Westside (Cincinnati) and in Kentucky for 3 years before making Indiana her home 2 years ago.

Jana’s job at NKU was to manage the website and social media content for the school’s alumni association. The work seemed like a good fit. But it wasn’t long before the university decided to take a different direction in online communications.

Jana Vaughan, Millie & CO.

“They did away pretty much with my whole department,” remembers Jana. “Everyone was let go...I was the only one left.”

Jana kept her job but felt increasingly unsettled by her new circumstances. An old hobby became her solace. 

A Trunk Full of Merchandise and a Knack for Selling

Jana was born in Ashland, Kentucky. Her father, a Christian church minister moved the family to Virginia when she was still a young girl. He supplemented his small ministry income by buying and selling household items, business goods, and antiques. Jana shared her father’s interest -- especially when it came to antiques. But for her, it was just a hobby.

“I think growing up my Dad was always a jack-of-all-trades,” observes Jana. “He had this knack for selling stuff...He would buy things wholesale at wholesale auctions and then sell them at flea markets or he would go to the retail auction.”

“I loved going with him. He was so charismatic! He would take his guitar and he’d tell jokes and he would sell at these Friday night retail auctions. He always had a trunk full of merchandise.”

Jana remembers some of her father’s more interesting sales acquisitions.

“One time he bought 200 pinball machines, all different,” she smiles. “Our basement was full of pinball machines! Another time he bought a pallet of (about) a thousand ceramic dolls.”

Jana thought those flea market trips with her father might be worth more than just memories. 

Weekends were generally open, the perfect opportunity to explore a new direction for her antique hobby. She started selling her own collectibles at area antique shows and discovered she really enjoyed the work and the people. She did well enough and her inventory grew. As it did, retail and storage space became increasingly important. So, she decided to add a new dimension to her retail efforts by opening booths in area antique malls. 

“I always wanted to have my own shop...So, doing the booth at the antique mall was kinda’ like having your own mini-shop. That’s how I started.”

Before she knew it, she was doing it all -- traveling to shows plus managing 4 retail locations in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. It was a lot of work. She needed help. Deidra Fajack, a friend who shared Jana’s interest in all things vintage and antique, stepped in to help.

“We found out we were both from Ashland (KY), born in the same hospital, and we became good friends. She always wanted to do what I did, booths at antique malls. So she started a booth. Then we started doing shows together.”

It was in the midst of all the chaos of keeping a regular job, managing retail booths, and doing seasonal shows, that a fellow antique enthusiast advised Jana to consider something she’d have never before thought possible: starting her own business.

It All Adds Up

“(Another) friend owned a shop in Lawrenceburg...and she also did shows...and she said, ‘Jana, you gotta’ quit your job and just open a shop in Lawrenceburg!’ She’s really the one that got me thinking about it. But I didn’t really think it was doable until my brother added up the numbers.”

That brother, David, was the preaching minister at the rapidly growing Whitewater Crossing Christian Church in Cleves, Ohio. The church was in the middle of a long-term building project. Well-acquainted with the difficulties of managing costs and multiple priorities, David saw that his sister might be spreading herself too thin. One day, over lunch, he encouraged his sister to close her mall booths and move her inventory under one roof.

Jana took the advice seriously, buying her own place in nearby Aurora while at the same time opening the new store.

”I bought an 1840’s stone one-room schoolhouse,” she laughs. “It takes 15 minutes just to get down my road. It is out there, it’s not on the way to anything. It sits on a little creek. My Mom lives there with me. My brother, David said, ‘Jana, seriously?’”

Jana named her new business venture Millie & Co. Mercantile after Jana’s grandmother.

“Millie was my maternal grandmother from Ireland. She had 12 kids, was extremely frugal and very creative with making due with nothing and hilariously funny. Her and my granddad moved here as teenagers during the potato famine. They came to Kentucky and my mother grew up literally in a one-room shack.”

Something for Everyone

Her mother’s experiences shaped Jana’s perspective on home and daily living. Her father’s knack for business gave her insight into buying and selling. Jana instinctively combines frugality and sales savvy with a sense of fun as she buys, then displays the results through the merchandise in the store.

“What makes Millie & Co. different is the way that I combine old, new, and in-between things so it’s not just antiques or just a gift shop. I’ve got everything from Burberry coats to home decor and candles. For me, that’s how I’ve always decorated because I’ve never had money to go out and get a designer and get all new things. Plus, I like that look of things being collected over time -- even though you might have just gotten them. And it’s inexpensive, it’s a great way to decorate.”

Although women favor what Millie & Co. has to offer, the shop’s appeal is more wide-ranging.  

“I’d say my demographic is women,” says Jana, “But I have a huge range (of customers) and there’s not really one age more than another. It’s because of all the fixer-upper type shows on television. (The shop) is popular with the young people starting out...because of my clothes and the home decor. Older women who grew up with this stuff -- you’d think of them wanting to get rid of things and not buying -- but they love it too! (And) this type of mercantile and store isn’t a throwback to Millennials,” she adds. “They’ve never experienced this kind of store. They’re too young. It’s almost like it’s a brand new concept.”

“Another thing that makes me different is my prices. I try to buy things at a good price and sell it at a good price and get it out of here. I want people to feel good. I’ve never had a lot of money. There are very few places you can go anymore with $5 and find something.”

Repurposed Home Decor

Many of the items the store sells are bought by customers wanting to repurpose furniture or decor. In order to keep up with demand, Jana works with a couple of local pickers who buy items specifically for her store. But Jana also buys repurposed items from local artists and designers. One supplier, in particular, was a friend who happened to specialize in repurposed furniture.

“Texas is the hotbed of this style of home decor. The trends that I follow are all from Texas. Becky Snyder and her husband live in an old Civil War era house and she makes things and repurposes. When I started doing the shows I didn’t have a lot of furniture. Then I found out Becky made furniture. I reached out to her.”

Becky supplied the repurposed furniture for Jana’s show and mall booths. She continued to supply when Jana decided to open shop. The agreement has been profitable for both women.

“The whole movement of recycling and repurposing is so popular and she (Becky) does that with all her furniture,” says Jana. “I don’t have very much of hers in here now because it sells!”

In addition to opening the store in 2016, Jana, along with friends Deidra and Becky, did close to 30 shows in 2017, a pretty ambitious schedule for a new start-up.

“It was a little too much,” acknowledges Jana. “I’m going to do less.”

But Jana sees the shows as a way to display Millie & Co. merchandise in a unique way.

“Shows are a big draw for younger people. Their demographics are exactly what I get here (at M&C). For instance, I do Ruffles and Rust twice a year. There’s one in Hamilton, Ohio. At the last one, there were 10,000 people that came to that show. There’s (another) show here in Lawrenceburg called Over the Moon.”

“I use the shows as an advertisement for the shop. I set up my booth just like a store. I hang curtains and chandeliers. And that attracts people from all over the tristate.”

Here’s an interesting side note. The Ruffles and Rust Expo is a vintage, national show with tour locations in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. In recent years, the Ohio show found they needed a new promoter, someone who was familiar with the vintage industry. They found the perfect candidate close to home.

“Now Deidra is the promoter. She has gone into a whole new career,” affirms Jana.

Memories and Warm Feelings

Millie & Co. has accumulated a significant following in a very short period of time. At last count, the store had more than 1,100 followers on Facebook and more than 700 on Pinterest where Jana has, so far, pinned more than 16,000 images. Millie & Co. was even mentioned in an article by a French blogger who covers the vintage market in Europe. But Jana doesn’t know what the article says.

She shrugs and laughs. “It’s all in French!”

But it’s not the ding of the shop bell that keeps Jana going. It’s the people who come through the door.

“The thing I didn’t picture was the friendships,” she says with a warm smile. “When I first moved here I said all the time ‘I feel like I live in Mayberry.’ I love people. I’ve got my regulars. There are certain customers that I’ve gotten to know now that when I see something I think, ‘They’re going to like that. My customers are like a family to me. And for me -- being fairly new to the area -- I’ve had friendships here that I never had (while) living in Virginia and I lived there for 35 years!”

“I wanted the shop to be a family sort of store where people are happy when they see things from their past and it brings up memories and people just get a warm feeling.”

She smiles again. “Because I do!”