Where Everyday’s A Holiday

by Janet O’Mara

The minute customers open the door into My Favorite Things gift, clothing and accessories shop, they witness what owner Linda Bachmann describes as the “miracle of light.”

Light from large windows near the ceiling and from an abundance of strategically placed track lighting softly floods the interior of the store. It’s a remarkably different world from the outside, especially on a dull, winter day, and wonderfully refreshing.

It is no wonder that Bachmann’s store, in the corner of the historic Lincoln Theatre (Pollack) building in downtown Mount Vernon, is a popular place to shop, especially at Christmas.

In addition to her regular merchandise, the “magic of Christmas” quickly becomes evident, with an amazing variety of gifts and decorations, including 13 large Christmas trees, each decorated according to a different theme. Trees are four to eight feet tall and all of the Christmas items are nestled within and around the normal, year-round stock. With all that merchandise, the store still does not look cluttered, but rich instead.

“Part of it is how you put it together and how you theme it,” says Bachmann. “So, you can have a lot of stuff, but if you create focal points, it still works — people can focus on each display.” There is also plenty of room for her friendly and mellow standard poodle, Noti (pronounced “no-tie”), to wander around and greet customers.

Bachmann, who has degrees in technical theater and costume design, looks at her store as a stage set. That training and experience gives her an advantage in choosing merchandise, designing displays and using color, focal points and themes.

She considers her windows to be stage sets, too, she says, and designing windows is “the fun part — the real fun part.” Many of her personal shopping excursions and vacations have resulted in treasures for window displays, such as the antique, wooden chair from a recent excursion to Orcas Island.

 

Letting the light in

When Bachmann first opened her shop, it was only a small portion of the 3,000-square-foot space she has now. Along the way, she acquired more and more space, taking over as other businesses moved out. She then did a major remodeling project about 10 years ago, doing all the design work herself. The most important and expensive part of it was to remove plywood that was covering what had been old, very high windows, all around the top of the walls of the entire store, and restore the glass. “It was like a miracle — it let the light in,” she observes. She also added extensive, adjustable track lighting. “Half of the remodeling funds went into lighting,” she recalls. “If you can’t see it, you can’t sell it.”

Bachmann also designed the angular shelving units that line the walls. These shelves also allow for displaying merchandise within themes, but keep it all from looking crowded and disorganized. A teal-green ceiling and carpet and pale-green walls provide the background.

“Before I remodeled, there were seven different ceiling heights out there — low ones, high ones, in between. Part of my goal was to open it up and get it back to the way the building was when it was built,” she notes. When planning any remodel, Bachmann has to be particularly mindful of the building she is in. The Lincoln Theatre, a 1926 vaudeville and silent movie house, was formerly privately owned, but is now the property of the City of Mount Vernon. Efforts are ongoing for fundraising and planning for an historic restoration and preservation effort. Part of this is a $250,000 grant for the restoration of the exterior, made possible by an appropriation from the Washington State Legislature, to be administered by the Washington State Historical Society.

“I’m concerned about getting things done in the building now,” she admits.

“Having to consult the city government and the (advisory) committees makes the decision-making process much longer. But they have assured me my business is important and that they will take care of me,” she reports.

“It’s the process that I find so frustrating sometimes,” she adds. “As with anything, I just like to get it done.”

One problem on which they are all working is the replacement of the outside awning. “Apparently it has to come off because it’s unsafe,” she explains, “but I’m just as concerned about the replacement design. The combination of this being an historical building plus the requirements I have for light and shade are very important.”

 

Midwest transplant

Bachmann moved to the Pacific Northwest about 25 years ago, after teaching theater at Mankato State University in Minnesota. “The blizzards got to me,” she recalls, “and I had always wanted to manage my own store.” She called up friends with a shop in Seattle’s University District and asked if she could work there for the summer. “And so I came out and started working and never went back.”

After a move to Anacortes, her U-District friends offered to open a shop for her to manage here. “They said. ‘Well, if you can find a location, we will open another store,’ because I had always made them money,” she explains. “And I got this location and we opened a store.

“I learned retailing on their money, which was a good deal.”

Bachmann has been operating the Mount Vernon shop for nearly 20 years, purchasing it outright about 15 years ago. “I was fortunately able to make the initial purchase of the shop with an inheritance,” she confesses. “That made it easier for me, because then I didn’t have to struggle so much through those first seven years that are so hard.”

Time-consuming as it is, continuing to do all her own buying and decorating is important to this successful entrepreneur, who characterizes her store at Christmas as a “fairyland.” Her hard-and-fast rules are that whatever she chooses must be “well made, well designed and in good taste.” She begins buying for Christmas at the start of every year and then stores it in her warehouse until the first of November. That’s when the decorating begins, followed by an open house. Christmas sales account for between 25 and 30 percent of total sales for the year, so it’s well worth the effort.

In addition to operating her business, Bachmann has contributed her time to many area endeavors. “There was a time when I was involved in anything that came along,” she points out. “I was president of the Skagit YMCA for a while, active in Skagit Women in Business and those sorts of things.” She also started and is still an adviser for the Tulip Festival Street Fair. “The first time, we had about 50 vendors, and now we have more than 200,” she reports. “It’s been a real good thing for downtown.”

After having achieved so much, this accomplished businesswoman admits she’s trying to stop taking on so much now. “I’ve even been trying to cut back to a four-day work week, but it doesn’t happen very often yet.” She emphasizes that she continues to enjoy retailing, “because it’s fun. The customers make it fun.

“Now I have a man in my life and a dog,” she says with a smile. “After 20-some years, I’m trying to back off a little and have some time for me.”