From shirt tales to formal tails

One of the places Sidney residents need to look to purchase Husker gear from baby clothes to knick knacks only true fans would love - Shirt Tales.

As soon as one enters the door the red, white and black of the Nebraska Huskers tickles the eyes, the pride of the state can’t all but be missed.

Shirt Tales has been around for a long time in Sidney, but Micahla Beyer, a 22-year-old business woman, bought the established business fresh out of school, even recalling the day, “a little over two years ago on September 1, 2010.”

Prior to her life changing purchase, Beyer had attended Johnson and Wales University in Denver, Co obtaining a degree in entrepreneurship with a focus on fashion merchandising, so when the well-established business came up for sale, she couldn’t pass up the “once on a lifetime opportunity.”

Beyer, a Sidney native, already knew what a grand purchase the store would be and with the opportunity to come back home where her family was, all the pieces just fell into place.

Once bought and she was settled in, naturally Beyer began to make things her own.

The quaint little store is now more than Husker gear and custom t-shirts or screen printing, besides the hour change, Beyer added alterations and dresses to her array of merchandise.

When residents need that extra inch or two taken off pants or are in need of a bit of taking in or letting out of clothing Beyer can do it, something any busy person can appreciate.

However, keeping to the sporty merchandise as top priority is something Beyer is sure to continue in the shop, though even here the ambitious young business woman is going to expand upon the merchandise.

Beyer has eyes on making her place truly a hometown shop where soon enough residents will be able to get their Raider pride on.

“For the past two years I have been working on building a Raider clothing line similar to the Huskers, only with the Raider mascot. And I think next fall I will finally be able to launch that.”

She said seeing the fanfare for the Husker line inspired her to bring the hometown team to her shop in time for the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year.

“Seeing the force behind the Huskers line and the term Husker Nation, I found very exciting,” she said. “And a lot of people in the community have expressed an interest. They have said ‘I wish we could find more Raider stuff. No one has anything, no one has anything.’ And I think it is very important to support our local school.”

With the exception of Letterman’s jackets, that she said they embroider or put special stitching on the jacket after a student has purchased it, she will carry a wide range of Raider merchandise.

“I would like to have a few different T-shirt designs, hoodies, zip-up hoodies, a crew neck sweatshirt, a couple different styles of sweatpants and some nicer items. Maybe some hats, warm up suite type things. I will probably start with the basic things; sweatpants, t-shirt and as interest grows and people learn that we have stuff in stock, I will build on it (the inventory).”

The latter of her expansions, and more recently added, is a place to buy delicately used formal dresses, something that gave her reason to expand the store physically.

Beyer is in the process of designing the store space, south of Shirt Tales, in time for prom with the concept of having a strictly dress shop, a place where the softer side of the business woman is surely to be felt.

The creative young entrepreneur knew success of the dress exchange she would need to provide a separate space to continue the venture and maybe in the future a different name for the dressier side; though the latter thoughts are not certain she admitted.

“Having the dresses on the Shirt Tales side worked, but in my head prom dresses and husker sports apparel are two totally different atmospheres. This side will definitely be more elegant, with softer colors. I’d like it to be more relaxing, kind of a ‘say yes to the dress’ feel. I want people to just walk in and say, ‘wow.’

“In my initial business plan, even two years ago, dresses were a part of it. Now that I have finally reached that point I am trying to do it right the first time. Same people running it, but just a different side (to her shop).”

Literally a different side; the two stores will be connected so customers will be able to roam back and forth between the two very different shops, through a doorway that already connects the stores.

But before she took the jump into expanding she needed to be sure it was the smart step to take, and to her surprise her original concept took off.

“When I first started it was for homecoming,” she explained. “My thought was I wasn’t going to buy new dresses but people could bring in the old dresses worn once or that are just hanging in their closet, and they could either swap with someone else a dress they feel is of similar value or just buy the dress. I only collect 25 dresses and I thought ‘I wish I had more,’ but at that point in time it was to just test the market, kind of a community service thing also. So I didn’t charge any type of a fee.

“I did it again for prom and the response was phenomenal. I couldn’t believe it. Just to see the explosion from homecoming to prom. We collected over 250 dresses and sold 75 of them. There is definitely a need. So after prom went so well and people started coming in all year round to look for dresses I decided I was going to have to run it more like a consignment and put more rules in place. So now it is consignment. What people can do is bring in there dresses, they get to set the price but for every dress they bring in they pay a dollar, if the dress sells I keep the dollar. If the dress doesn’t sell and they decide they want to pick up the dress and leave they get their dollar back.”

She said the dollar is like a consignment fee or a cheap way of renting the space the dress occupies on the rack within her store.

As for the added rules, she is making sure her inventory is up to par and therefore has set regulation on exactly what they will and won’t take.

She said some of the regulations will be on condition of the dress and style of the dress.

Beyer is not just going to limit her formal wear to homecoming and prom dresses though; she has aspirations of expanding this womanly formal wear into bridal wear as well.

Eventually she will give residents a place to both shop for and sell those never worn again bridesmaids gowns, “Once I get this building set up I would like to do bridal gowns and bridesmaids dresses, purely on consignment.”

Beyer said she couldn’t think of having a business anywhere else and is more than happy to have her business in Sidney, as opposed to staying in Denver as she could have fresh out of school.

“I lived in Denver for two years, a big city, I didn’t like it,” she said. “It was too loud, I felt like no one stopped to enjoy anything and I knew I would never be happy there. I knew I wanted to come back here. My family is here; I’m very close to my family.”

Not only does she appreciate the customer base but she accredits her success to hometown residents, “Sidney is a great smaller community, the people here are wonderful. When I first took over the business it was cool, because other business owners would stop in and say, ‘Hi Micahla, how’s it going?’ Or recognize me on the street and say hello, it was very welcoming, I liked that, it is something I wanted to hold on to, it is a whole different family within the community.”

For her the success has been a whirlwind, “It’s hard for me to believe it’s been two years. I look back and think, ‘wow time flies!’”