Another Anniemara Anniversary and its origins
Today (December 1st) is an anniversary that both Annie and I (and apparently a lot of our former customers) wish we didn’t have to celebrate. Customers would rather come into the boutique to see how Annie would decorate the store and touch and feel the fashions and be able to try them on than to look at a picture on a website. They wanted to see her artworks up close and personal. Annie and I would rather drive the 1.2 miles to the store, to turn the key and open the doors on another day than Annie’s current commute of 35 steps (including a dozen stairs leading up to the studio) and my 6 step commute from the bedroom to the executive office of Anniemara between the kitchen and living room. Four years ago yesterday (November 30, 2020) is the day that we had to close “Annie’s Unique Boutique” after an 8 year run at 1049 County St. in Somerset. Due to a combination of a health issue and Covid (not related) we had no alternative other than to close the store.
The saying that “when one door closes, another opens” proved to be true in our case and the day after the store closed, the internet opened the doors to https://www.anniemara.com/ and Anniemara has been open every day since December 1, 2020. Being the tech Neanderthal that I am, the website definitely poses its own set of challenges but, we’re still here.
In case you’ve ever wondered where the name Anniemara came from, “Mara” is Scottish Gaelic for “of the sea” or marine or maritime. You all know Annie and she has always had a love of the beach or ocean so it wasn’t much of a stretch to expand that to include the Taunton River. We have lived in a cottage on the banks of the Taunton River for nearly 15 years so when we realized that we would have to close the store, we decided to convert the loft-style bedroom of the cottage to a working studio for Annie to be able to draw the inspiration for her art directly from the river. We are so close to the river that the balcony off her studio virtually overhangs the Taunton. From her recliner in the studio, she can watch the sunrise over the river or the comings and goings of boats or the many species of birds that come daily to feed at the birdfeeders set up on the balcony just the other side of the sliding glass doors.
Annie loved to draw as a kid and studied art in college (UMass Amherst ’73). Upon graduating from UMass, she started her 35 year career teaching English at BMC Durfee High School in Fall River (there’s that river reference again). We were married in 1996 on the Summer Solstice (not a coincidental date) and, in 1998, Annie rekindled her artistic efforts under the name of “Annie’s Artifax” and participated in many arts and crafts fairs while still teaching. She had one of the shortest retirements in recorded history when she retired from teaching in 2008 and, about a week later, signed a lease on an Artist-in-Residence studio at The Narrows Center for the Arts at Battleship Cove also in Fall River where she continued to create her artworks.
In the fall of 2012, we had decided to look for a store location close to home that we would open in the spring of 2013. We found, what we thought would be a perfect location almost immediately, only 1.2 miles from home. Acting on impulse, we put a deposit on the store and actually had a soft opening on December 1st. Annie used to go to NYC several times a year to buy findings and embellishments for use with her hand-made polymer clay jewelry. On one of her trips, she found herself in the “Garment District” and she started buying new fashions for the store as well as jewelry. It was at this point that we changed the name from “Annie’s Artifax” to “Annie’s Unique Boutique” to better reflect the feel of the boutique and all it offered. It was also a natural since, if you looked up the word shop-a-holic in the dictionary, Annie’s picture would be there. She parlayed that into monthly shopping trips to NYC to buy “for the store”. Her momma didn’t raise no dummies.
Annie would still be going to NYC to stock the online store but we just can’t afford to play the “Exchange game” when people buy clothing online and it doesn’t fit or they don’t like the color and start returning stuff.
We truly enjoyed going to the store every morning and the interaction with customers and meeting new people but the handwriting was on the wall and we took the leap to the WWW. We can be found 7 days a week at
email: fprescott@comcast.net or
phone: 774-488-9844
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