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EP# 295: Shop Local, Think Funky: The Chifferobe Story with Stephanie Wilder

• Skip Mauney & Stephanie Wilder • Episode 296

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What makes Stephanie Wilder with Chifferrobe Home and Garden a good neighbor?

What happens when life forces you to reinvent yourself at age 60? For Stephanie Wilder, being laid off from her career as an English teacher became the unexpected catalyst for a thriving second act as the owner of Chifferobe Home and Garden in Black Mountain.

"Maybe I'll open a shop. How hard can that be?" Stephanie recalls thinking after the juvenile prison where she taught closed down. Twelve years later, her "funky store where you never knew what you were going to find inside" has become a beloved local business with a fiercely independent approach. Named after the southern term for wardrobe that appears in To Kill a Mockingbird (one of her favorite books to teach), Chifferobe reflects Stephanie's literary background and unique vision.

Unlike most retailers, Stephanie avoids trade shows and conventional buying channels, preferring to discover distinctive vendors who offer products not found everywhere else. Her store specializes in clothing made from natural fibers, produced outside China, with many items crafted in Italy. This commitment to uniqueness extends to her business philosophy: "I'm reluctant to actually play by anybody's rules besides my own." This approach has served her well through challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Helene, which forced her to close for nearly two months without electricity, water, or internet.

The hurricane crisis revealed not just Stephanie's resilience but the strength of her community. With help from local nonprofit Mountain BizWorks and loyal customers, Chifferobe emerged stronger than ever. "I feel so close to everyone in this town now," she shares, reflecting on how neighbors banded together during the disaster. Her message for listeners echoes this community spirit: "You don't have to support big businesses. You should shop local and look for things that are not made in China and try to help the local economy."

Discover Chifferobe Home and Garden in person in Black Mountain or online at www.Chifferobehomeandgarden.com, and experience a retail space that proves it's never too late to create something uniquely yours.

To learn more about Chifferrobe Home and Garden go to:

https://chifferobehomeandgarden.com/

Chifferrobe Home and Garden

(828) 669-2743



Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monty.

Speaker 2:

Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. So we are very excited today to have a very special guest in the studio with us for the first time, and so I'm very excited to learn all about her and what she does, and I'm sure you will be too, because today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, ms Stephanie Wilder, who is the owner-operator of Schiferobe Home and Garden. Stephanie, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3:

Thank you very much, Skip. I appreciate being included.

Speaker 2:

Well, we're thrilled to have you, like I said, very excited to learn all about you and your unique business, as I understand. So if you don't mind, why don't you kick us off by telling us about what you do?

Speaker 3:

All right. Well, I opened this store, I guess about 12 years ago. I had been an English teacher my entire adult life and finally the state decided to close the school I was teaching in, which was a juvie prison, and they decided that it was costing too much to run that particular facility. So they shut it down and laid us all off, and by then I was yeah, I was like too old to get another teaching job. People are very cautious about hiring anyone who's past 50. And by then I was past 60. And you know, I was like really unemployable. So I thought, what am I going to do? Maybe I'll open a shop. How hard can that be? And so I, you know, just opened a shop.

Speaker 3:

I didn't know anything about business, I didn't know how to do anything, and of course I have made a bunch of mistakes. But my initial goal was to have a funky store where you never knew what you were going to find inside. So I named it Shiferobe, home and Garden, and a shifirobe is an old-fashioned southern word that means wardrobe or a wardrobe of any kind, and so I imagined the store as being crammed full of all kinds of things, and you'd have to look around in there to find it. Also, when I was teaching English, I loved teaching the book To Kill a Mockingbird and that's where I learned about what a shiffrobe is, because, coming from New York City, we didn't call anything a shiffrobe, we called it an armoire or a wardrobe or something. But shiffrobe just seemed like the right name for a southern funky country style store, so that's what I named it and I've been having the best time ever since then.

Speaker 3:

So, as I said, I opened it about 12 years ago and just sort of made it up as I went along and to this day I'm not really sure what one should do to run a business. I've taken a bunch of classes at Mountain Biz Works, which is a great nonprofit organization, and they tell me Stephanie, you're smart enough to know how to do this. But I'm reluctant to actually play by anybody's rules besides my own, so I don't really do the things one does, but still, the store's doing fine and even post COVID, post Helene, I have managed to stay afloat and actually make some money. So it's great.

Speaker 2:

All right, wow, well, it sounds very unique and interesting. So in the chiferobe business I said it's unique, so I don't know if we could call it an industry, but what are some myths or misconceptions that people have about your kind of business?

Speaker 3:

Well, the first one, I think, would be that you really have to advertise a lot, and when I first opened up, I put paid ads in magazines. There are two really beautiful ones in this area. It's called the Laurel of Asheville is one, and the other one was Asheville Made, and I spent a ton of money advertising. But when you live in a small town like Black Mountain, people come here and they just go into every store, so it really doesn't take that kind of advertising. Plus, people don't really read much anymore much to my chagrin as an English teacher but they also don't look at magazines. Maybe they flip through the pages, but that's it. So online advertising, instagram, facebook, all of that has become much more important, and so I pay someone to do that for me, because I don't have the time to really do a good job for getting on social media, but it's important.

Speaker 2:

It is important and you know I spent about 40 years in the print industry myself, yes, and community newspapers and magazines and lifestyle magazines and that sort of thing, and it's unfortunate people don't read anymore. You know they like videos, which is you know they'll watch this.

Speaker 3:

Yes, Well, that'd be great yeah that's good, Well cool.

Speaker 2:

So outside of work, Stephanie, what do you like to do for fun?

Speaker 3:

Well, this is really kind of funny because for my work I never go to trade shows. Most people that own a store go to, you know, the big Atlanta market or different markets that they hold all year round. But I never do that because I want stuff in my shop to be unique and so if you go to the market and you go around and all the vendors see, you know, you see just what everybody else is buying. So I have to look high and low to find people that sell stuff that I'm interested in carrying in the shop. So I do a lot of shopping online to see who can I link with that will sell to me wholesale.

Speaker 3:

And so what I like to do on my day off is go shopping. I like to go to other people's stores. So, like yesterday was a day off and my husband and I drove to Hendersonville to visit similar stores so I could see, like, what similar stores were doing or who they were selling, so I could maybe make some more connections, and that's what I did. It was a really fun day and we stopped and we had a little bite to eat and a glass of wine and it was a lovely day. But that's kind of like what I like to do.

Speaker 2:

Wow, so work is fun for you.

Speaker 3:

It really is fun. I love teaching also, but it was a lot of hard work because every night I'd come home with papers to grade and books that I had to reread in order to be ready for the next day's classes. But I go home at the end of this day and I'm like do-di-do, you know, I'm ready to. You know, make dinner and have a party.

Speaker 2:

Wow, awesome. Well, I've always heard if you love what you you do, you don't work a day in your life.

Speaker 3:

so that's the truth, right that's wonderful.

Speaker 2:

Well, stephanie, if, if we could switch gears for just a second, can you describe a challenge or a life, a life challenge or a hardship that you've gone through, that you? You came through on the other side with flying colors and came out better. Does anything come to mind?

Speaker 3:

Well, yeah, hurricane Helene was a hardship that we all endured here in this area, and we were not open for close to two months. We, you know, ran out of money. I had ordered a ton of stuff for the holidays and that stuff came in and I couldn't sell it because it was in the closet and up high on the shelf. So it didn't get destroyed, but coming through it, I had much more confidence in myself as a person running a store. I was able to get a loan from Mountain BizWorks, which helped so much, because I really didn't even have money to pay the rent after two months.

Speaker 3:

Not only did we not have the ability to be open, but we had no water and no electricity and no internet electricity and no internet. So it was like we had been removed from mainstream society and were really wondering whether we would be able to come back on and open up again and would we stay afloat. But I had been in business then for a long time and I thought, after all, this time am I going to be, you know, destroyed? And the answer was no. So it just gave me confidence that there are people out there to help and organizations that will pitch in and people coming in from out of town to make it a point to shop here. So we had a great Christmas and that really inspired me to keep on and not worry too much. I am a worrier, but not too. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, same here. I'm a worrier. I've got it from my mother, but it sounds like you came through on the other side stronger than when you went in.

Speaker 3:

That's true. Yeah, it really was true, yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's been very heartwarming to me that you know, especially with all that. You know this is the Good Neighbor podcast and there's a lot of good neighbors out there that, when all that happened, came out to help their neighbors and it's just incredible to me, um, you know, very heartwarming so very good, well, if, stephanie.

Speaker 3:

Oh, I'm sorry was a place where, uh, people who didn't know each other just banded together and helped out where they could and fed each other, and it was so wonderful. I feel so close to everyone in this town now.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome, so coming out stronger throughout the whole region.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, Stephanie, if you could think of one thing that you would like our listeners and viewers to remember about Schifero Home and Garden, what would that be?

Speaker 3:

I sell a lot of clothes in here and they're unusual clothes. They're all natural fibers and they're made not in China. Most of them are made in Italy, I guess. But what I'd like people to remember is you don't have to support big businesses. You should shop local and look for things that are not made in China and try to help the local economy.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. That's what we're all about here at the Good Neighbor, so we appreciate that sentiment very much. And for those of us who are interested love funky, chiffon type stores. How can we learn more?

Speaker 3:

Oh, I have a website. It's called www spelled out chiferobe C-H-I-F, as in Frank, F-E-R-O-B-E homeandgardencom E-R-O-B-E home A-N-D gardencom. So get on my website and you can see lots of images of the store. I have an online shopping link on there and I hope you come in and see me soon. It's really great in Black Mountain and I'd love to meet you.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, awesome. You heard it here, guys, and you can go online, but nothing like, nothing like being in person. I like to. I like to touch the stuff that I'm going to buy. So very good, wwwshifferobehomeandgardencom. We'll check it out. So, stephanie, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to tell us all about you and your journey and your funky store. I love that and we wish you and your family and your clients and all of Black Mountain all the best moving forward.

Speaker 3:

Thank you very much, Skip.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, and maybe we can have you back sometime.

Speaker 3:

I'd love it, thanks.

Speaker 2:

All right, thanks so much.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom, or call 423-719-5873.