Owning a shop started as just a dream many, many years ago. When I was young, I was the neighborhood sales girl selling everything from painted rocks, stationary and Girl Scout cookies, to newspapers, greeting cards, and mowing lawns just to earn a little money to buy records. I took after my mother who was the family entrepreneur and neighborhood sales lady selling everything from Avon to Tupperware. She did what it took to help our family get through the worst economic inflation and gas shortages in U.S. history outside of the Great Depression of the 1930’s. This was the 1970’s and my “at-home mom” did what it took to help dad keep our family afloat.
I was able to go to college for "Art in Advertising", (I wanted to be an artist) but life happened and had to leave school. I worked at the local mall instead, as I had a love for people, merchandising and sales.
I soon got married, moved, had a family, and worked in retail management at the malls for 16 years (Back when malls were "a thing".) In-between selling, merchandising and getting to know my customers, I often dreamed of having a store of my own, what I would carry and how I would display it. I would talk about it, draw it out and dream about it, but it was not meant to be.
In midlife, I found myself divorced with three kids, but dedicated my life to look after them, protect them and keep them happy while enduring our family drama. Later, I met my new husband who blessed our lives, and with our little family, we moved to start a new life.
I secured a job as a merchandiser at the local Saks Fifth Ave. and my love for retail bloomed again with the desire for my own store. After 3 years of working at the "Retail Mothership", however, I took a different path and transitioned to becoming a realtor and joined my husband's team and together, we made a great team. We soon bought a new home in a new neighborhood and life was finally good...
Then the real estate crash happened... We lost our home, one of our cars and our business. Being so close to the coast, we visited the beach often to be consoled by the warm sunshine, the beautiful blue sky, and the waves that crashed upon the gulf shore. We also had the support of our kids who were now college bound and getting married.
To get back on our feet, we spent several years scrambling to rebuild our small RE company from the ashes and we survived with success. Soon afterwards, we sold our company to a major RE firm and joined their staff and life was good again.
Then "Covid" happened. Thankfully our state did not "shut down". We were busier than ever servicing people moving to our state by the thousands, but my husband experienced complications of his diabetes. I worked harder than ever to take care of my husband, our business and meet the bills to keep them paid and eventually, giving up my dream of ever owning my own store.
While thinking and researching ways to ease our tight situation, I stumbled upon Etsy’s website. "Is it possible to own my own store now?", I wondered. I read everything I could about Etsy, and my husband and I watched as many videos we could on the subject. Finally we took the leap to open our own store. My husband and I used a previous name of one of our real estate companies, and tweaked it into Parrot Key Trading Co. I then applied for a state and city license and we became official in 2022. We started off strong, selling a few items with under 20 items in our store! (All the video experts said it couldn’t be done.) Business was moving forward and Life was looking up once again.
Then the rise of inflation happened, followed with the rise in taxes, groceries and gas, then sales fell off.
Our store has been in the making since then, having to work around the changes in our life. but we are officially retired from real estate sales, and are able to spend more time on the store. We may never be able to compete with the mega stores on this site, But we believe in quality service and keeping our customers happy while we make it through these tough times. (Like my mom did back in the day). Why? Because we love what we do. We talk about new concepts, new ideas, what we would carry, how we would display it, then draw them out, and designing them to make them a reality.
We continue to make each design original, unique, fresh and fun and we'll continue selecting quality vendors to create new and beautiful, complete products. We are focusing on being a holiday store year ‘round, and are planning to add wall art and home décor products soon and perhaps next year we’ll add my homemade jewelry to our offerings. We are more of a small boutique rather than a mega store, so it will take a little time to really fill our store. Our vendors are awesome and shipping times are fast. You will receive quality service for shopping with us. The customer comes first and we are waiting to serve you!
Sincerely,
Cathryn and our Parrot Key Trading Co. Family
I was able to go to college for "Art in Advertising", (I wanted to be an artist) but life happened and had to leave school. I worked at the local mall instead, as I had a love for people, merchandising and sales.
I soon got married, moved, had a family, and worked in retail management at the malls for 16 years (Back when malls were "a thing".) In-between selling, merchandising and getting to know my customers, I often dreamed of having a store of my own, what I would carry and how I would display it. I would talk about it, draw it out and dream about it, but it was not meant to be.
In midlife, I found myself divorced with three kids, but dedicated my life to look after them, protect them and keep them happy while enduring our family drama. Later, I met my new husband who blessed our lives, and with our little family, we moved to start a new life.
I secured a job as a merchandiser at the local Saks Fifth Ave. and my love for retail bloomed again with the desire for my own store. After 3 years of working at the "Retail Mothership", however, I took a different path and transitioned to becoming a realtor and joined my husband's team and together, we made a great team. We soon bought a new home in a new neighborhood and life was finally good...
Then the real estate crash happened... We lost our home, one of our cars and our business. Being so close to the coast, we visited the beach often to be consoled by the warm sunshine, the beautiful blue sky, and the waves that crashed upon the gulf shore. We also had the support of our kids who were now college bound and getting married.
To get back on our feet, we spent several years scrambling to rebuild our small RE company from the ashes and we survived with success. Soon afterwards, we sold our company to a major RE firm and joined their staff and life was good again.
Then "Covid" happened. Thankfully our state did not "shut down". We were busier than ever servicing people moving to our state by the thousands, but my husband experienced complications of his diabetes. I worked harder than ever to take care of my husband, our business and meet the bills to keep them paid and eventually, giving up my dream of ever owning my own store.
While thinking and researching ways to ease our tight situation, I stumbled upon Etsy’s website. "Is it possible to own my own store now?", I wondered. I read everything I could about Etsy, and my husband and I watched as many videos we could on the subject. Finally we took the leap to open our own store. My husband and I used a previous name of one of our real estate companies, and tweaked it into Parrot Key Trading Co. I then applied for a state and city license and we became official in 2022. We started off strong, selling a few items with under 20 items in our store! (All the video experts said it couldn’t be done.) Business was moving forward and Life was looking up once again.
Then the rise of inflation happened, followed with the rise in taxes, groceries and gas, then sales fell off.
Our store has been in the making since then, having to work around the changes in our life. but we are officially retired from real estate sales, and are able to spend more time on the store. We may never be able to compete with the mega stores on this site, But we believe in quality service and keeping our customers happy while we make it through these tough times. (Like my mom did back in the day). Why? Because we love what we do. We talk about new concepts, new ideas, what we would carry, how we would display it, then draw them out, and designing them to make them a reality.
We continue to make each design original, unique, fresh and fun and we'll continue selecting quality vendors to create new and beautiful, complete products. We are focusing on being a holiday store year ‘round, and are planning to add wall art and home décor products soon and perhaps next year we’ll add my homemade jewelry to our offerings. We are more of a small boutique rather than a mega store, so it will take a little time to really fill our store. Our vendors are awesome and shipping times are fast. You will receive quality service for shopping with us. The customer comes first and we are waiting to serve you!
Sincerely,
Cathryn and our Parrot Key Trading Co. Family