Somewhere in Dede Ashby’s Indian River Shores home is the napkin Waldo Sexton signed in 1950 – maybe it was 1951, she’s not sure – during a festive evening of dining and drinking with her parents, Dick and Evelyn Bireley, at the Driftwood Inn.
“I know I’ve got it,” said Ashby, who turned 80 in February, “but I don’t know where it is.”
By signing that napkin, Sexton agreed to lease the then-vacant, now-prime parcel of Vero Beach land on the southeast corner of Beachland Boulevard and Ocean Drive, where the Bireleys would build and open The Petite Shop in 1952.
Next Wednesday, the family-owned seaside boutique – which sells women’s clothing, jewelry, handbags and other accessories – will celebrate its 70th anniversary.
There will be a tent outside, and the public is invited to stop by for refreshments and giveaways. Longtime customers are welcome to enjoy a nostalgic stroll down memory lane and reminisce.
“We have a lot of very loyal customers who appreciate how we do business,” said Adriana Lattanzio, who has managed the shop for the past 21 years and continues to ride her bicycle to work from her Central Beach home. “We get a lot of passersby stopping in because of our location, but the majority of our customers have been here before.
“There’s a small-town, family feel to the place, and for as long as I’ve been here, we’ve followed the same philosophy: Treat people the way you want to be treated,” she added. “To this day, we do things the old-fashioned way. We’ll gift-wrap your purchases and still hand-write receipts, which is something you rarely see anymore.
“When you think about it, it’s remarkable that this place has been here for 70 years, still owned by the same family and still running the business the same way.”
Same as the Bireleys ran it.
Same as Ashby ran it with her husband, Jim Higdon, even after they were divorced three decades ago but remained business partners until his death in November.
You might find it somewhat ironic, then, that Ashby initially wanted nothing to do with the shop when her parents, who had owned and successfully operated other retail businesses in South Florida for years, offered to sell it to her and Higdon in 1972.
When the call came, the Higdons were living in Texas with their two young children, Laurie and Trey.
“My parents wanted to sell and asked if we wanted to buy it, and I immediately said no,” Ashby said. “I had grown up in retail and really didn’t want anything to do with it. But Jim said, ‘You have a choice: Either we buy the shop in Vero or we buy my dad’s pool hall in Tennessee.’
“I wanted the pool hall.”
Higdon, though, convinced her to return to Vero Beach and help run The Petite Shop – which, by the way, was not named for the size of the clothing it sold. In fact, the store didn’t start selling clothing until after Ashby and Higdon took over.
The “Petite” name came from the tiny size of the Bireleys’ first store, which was located in Fort Lauderdale, where they lived before the family moved to Vero Beach in 1960.
Why Vero?
According to Ashby, her parents became enamored of Vero when they and their South Florida friends began visiting in 1949, making the four-hour drive north on U.S. 1 and staying at the Driftwood.
“There wasn’t much on Ocean Drive back then,” Ashby recalled. “The Ocean Grill was there, and the Driftwood Inn, and maybe a couple of other businesses. Nothing like it is now.”
It was at the Driftwood that the Bireleys met and befriended Sexton, who, along with his wife, would join the group for dinner and drinks. At one point, Ashby’s father mentioned that he’d welcome the opportunity to build a store in Vero Beach.
As Ashby explained: Sexton said he had some land at the intersection of Beachland Boulevard and Ocean Drive, and when the Higdons said they were interested, he grabbed a napkin, drew up an oversimplified 99-year lease and signed it.
Later, to further authenticate the agreement, two witnesses signed an addendum on a Driftwood receipt, on which the Sextons wrote: “To the Bireleys from Mrs. and Mr. W.E. Sexton. Love & kisses. We hope to see you on your 99th birthday and I will agree to extend the lease for another period of 99 years.”
A formal lease was signed in June 1952, Ashby said.
That her father would take such a financial risk was not surprising, Ashby said, citing his past business ventures, specifically The Straw Basket, one of the Bireleys’ South Florida retail stores.
In addition to straw baskets, the store sold straw hats that became wildly popular with college students who flocked to Fort Lauderdale for spring break. Then, Ashby’s father came up with a way to make the hats even more appealing.
He ordered hundreds of little toy monkeys – their arms, legs and heads moved – and enlisted the family’s help in gluing them onto the straw hats, creating a new company fitting named Monkey Business.
The hats were a rousing success, so much so that Dick Bireley soon found himself appearing on “What’s My Line?,” a nationally televised game show, where a stumped panel failed to identify his unusual occupation.
“So he told them, ‘I make monkey hats,’ and they brought one out to show the audience,” Ashby said. “The next day, Saks Fifth Avenue called and ordered grosses of them.
“We started making more hats, but after a while, my dad had to call and tell them we just couldn’t do it,” she added. “It was too much.”
Years later, Ashby would take a similar gamble and become an innovator in the women’s clothing industry by introducing petite sizes at the shop here – at a time when there were only a handful of such lines made in the U.S.
Ashby said The Petite Shop, which now sells women’s clothing of all sizes, is enjoying a “phenomenal” season, which is true of most businesses on the island, where tourism revenues are soaring.
And with 29 years remaining on the lease, she doesn’t anticipate any major changes to the operation – for now, anyway.
“For Trey and I, the shop has been part of our lives forever,” she added. “And we’ve got almost 30 years left on our lease. That’s a long time.”
So is 70 years. It’s an anniversary worth celebrating.
