BY JEFFREY HAGE MONTICELLO TIMES
Kendra Saylor and Grace Stoa have taken an untraditional route in establishing their Monticello business , Yours & Mine Crafts & Gifts .
They didn ’ t start the consignment art , gift , and food shop from the ground up .
Instead , Saylor and Stoa deconstructed a thriving business they already owned .
Saylor and Stoa , both 24 and planning a Fall wedding , transformed a successful business organizing craft fairs into a budding retail business in a former restaurant party room at 242 W Broadway St , Monticello .
With 25 vendors selling items from the sales floor of the story , Yours & Mine Crafts & Gifts is like a craft fair every day of the week .
Kendra Saylor and Grace Stoa planned to opened the store on Saturday , April 4 , 2020 but COVID-19 got in the way of those plans .
Saylor said that they decided to beat the system and take their store into the virtual world- at least for the first few months of its existence .
Saylor and Stoa created videos of three items from each vendor and presented the videos online .
Shopping at Yours & Mine Crafts & Gifts resembled shopping with television sales site QVC .
The store opened online with people purchasing goods and having it delivered or available for curb side pick-up .
The eventually opened the door to their shop the last weekend of May 2020.22
But Yours & Mine Crafts & Gifts ’ roots were really planted in 2019 when Saylor ’ s mom had a revelation .
“ She participated in vendor events as long as I can remember and said she noticed people were not hosting events in
the Monticello-Buffalo-Rogers area ,” Saylor said .
That led to the young couple launching their craft and vendor fair business .
Without Saylor ’ s mom kind of pushing them into the world of being business owners , there would be no store on Broadway Street .
But it was another conversation that made Yours & Mine Crafts & Gifts a reality .
“ We were at an event chatting with a couple of our vendors about how much we liked going into multi-vendor stores and they asked us if we had ever thought about starting one ,” Saylor said . “ So , we went home and started to figure out how to start one .”
That ’ s when the store in Monticello was born .
Kendra Saylor works as the store ’ s day-to-day manager and is at work
Grace Stoa not just a co-owner of the store . She is also a vendor , selling custom shirts , onesies , tote bags , coffee tumblers , etched wine glasses and beer mugs , and waterproof vinyl stickers through her business , Grace ’ s Custom Creations . Grace also works as a long-term substitute teacher , teaching special education to students in the Waconia School District .
With Yours & Mine Crafts & Gifts approaching its one year anniversary , Saylor and Stoa have been hoping to celebrate and finally have an official opening- something like the grand opening COVID-19 prevented them from having .
“ But it doesn ’ t look like that ’ s going to be able to happening ,” Stoa said , noting that the coronavirus was still having affects on small retailers like Yours & Mine Crafts & Gifts .
Yours & Mine Crafts & Gifts website can be found at www . yoursandminemn . com .
Kendra Saylor , sitting , and Grace Stoa are the owners of Yours & Mine Crafts & Gifts in Monticello .
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