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Where bargains meet style, charity
Hospice boutique promises to be unlike any thrift store currently in Calvert
Friday, April 24, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo
Ann Kaine of Huntingtown and Kim Zabiegalski are the organizers of Shoppe for Hospice … A Boutique to Benefit Calvert Hospice, which will sell brand-name, new women's and children's clothing and accessories. Calvert Hospice hopes to open the boutique in the mid-summer at its location in the Kaine Center in Huntingtown.
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Serving women and children first is the aim of a new boutique scheduled to open mid-summer in Huntingtown.
The boutique looks to provide new, name-brand items of clothing and accessories at incredible discount prices while doing two things — dispelling people's conceptions of what makes up a thrift store and raising money for Calvert Hospice.
The Shoppe for Hospice … A Boutique to Benefit Calvert Hospice is currently looking for volunteers to help with the store, which plans to open this summer at its Huntingtown location in the Kaine Center near the Huntingtown Volunteer Fire Department. Currently, hospice is looking for volunteers to tag items, run the check-out counter and numerous others duties that will be needed to give the boutique a feel and look that hospice members want in order to be a "thrift store" unlike any other in Calvert.
"Two [hospice supporters], Christine Blake and Darla Koch, came to us last October with the idea that we get a thrift shop going, but we would need to find someone to run it," said Calvert Hospice Executive Director Lynn Bonde. "They are still involved as advisors and supporters … the idea mushroomed and snowballed into reality. We know that there are a lot of really wonderful charities that run a lot of thrift stores in Calvert so we wanted to do something different. They really planted the seed, and it germinated, but finding a space for us to use was a big challenge."
But soon, hospice was able to find a place, thanks to another hospice supporter who had some much needed connections.
"I was having lunch with Ann Kaine and I mentioned this idea to her and asked her if she wanted to be involved," Bonde said.
Ann Kaine of Huntingtown, wife of Brooke Kaine of Kaine Homes, readily told Bonde that she would be interested in getting donations and running the shop. Unbeknownst to Bonde, Amy Kaine later asked her husband if there was anywhere that hospice could use as space to set up shop. Soon, Kaine Homes found warehouse space that it agreed hospice could use to bring the boutique one step closer to reality.
Currently, Ann Kaine has been going out and getting carpeting, shelving and other things to stock the boutique, including the new, in-style clothing.
"Lynn Bonde and I have been friends since I moved down here," Kaine said. "I feel that hospice is an organization that has no boundaries, an organization that can touch anyone at anytime. I couldn't think of a better charitable organization I could be involved in."
In addition to creating the aesthetic look and feel of the boutique that hospice wants, Kaine is using her connections with Baltimore-based boutique owners to supply the store with its wares.
"Boutique owners in Baltimore have been kind to donate new clothing that they haven't been able to sell," Kaine said, adding that now she is focusing on coordinating all the work that needed to be done to make the warehouse "livable," including installing a working bathroom, carpeting and lighting.
While Kaine toils to get the shop ready, hospice is moving forward with staffing the shop, and that, Bonde said, is where hospice turned to Kim Zabiegalski of Lusby, a self-proclaimed proud thrift-store shopper.
"I love thrift-storing or ‘junking' as it is called in my household, and I love volunteering and now I have a position to do both at the same time," Zabiegalski said. "It's the hunt, it's like a disease. I started doing it out of necessity when I got married 15 years ago. I can't pass up a bargain. My husband says we're going to ‘go broke saving all this money.' You never know when you will find some Prada shoes or something like that."
A full-time volunteer at the Calvert Marine Museum in the Discovery Room, Zabiegalski has also been connected to hospice via a friend. Zabiegalski used to work with Calvert Hospice's Community Outreach Coordinator Judy Fields.
"When [Fields] heard about hospice doing the Shoppe, she knows how much I love to thrift shop, and she contacted me and it just fell into my lap," said Zabiegalski, who said her experience with thrift stores expands to having worked at a store in Camp Springs at one time.
It is Zabiegalski's experience as both a spendthrift and thrift store worker that is helping shape the boutique vs. a normal thrift shop of used and community donated items.
"Our goal is to offer some really nice brand-name, high-end things at a very low price in an environment where anyone will want to shop and to ultimately expand to men's and other household items," she said. "There are a lot of people out there who don't like the term ‘thrift store' or have an idea of what they think a thrift store is and we aim to change that. We want people to be able to get brand name items at a very fair and reasonable price, not to mention in this area you have to drive to Waldorf or Annapolis to find some of those brand name items."
"Hopefully the hospice store will take out the hours upon hours of digging that I have done at thrift stores and make it easier because it will be all brand names."
Fields said the store will allow for women to purchase stylish clothing. Children's clothing will include such high-dollar names as Abercrombie, Children's Place, Tommy Hilfiger, Osh Kosh B-gosh, Old Navy and The Gap.
"Several other hospices and nonprofits have been doing this sort of thing for a variety of reasons," Fields said. "We won't have a lot of space so we are limited in what we can bring in. We really want to utilize the space to the best of the ability to bring in resources for hospice, and we won't have a lot of storage area for furniture."
And, Fields said, Kaine's connections have really stepped up.
"[For her friends who own these boutiques] to agree to give hospice these brand-new clothing items is huge. People from all over the county will come to shop there," Fields said.
"I'm really excited because this is an idea that came from folks in the community, and the more that I learn about it, I am learning about people who are really into to thrift-shopping," Bonde said.
