Gabrielle Ayers has wanted to own a boutique in Stanley for years. 

Ayers, 32, already owns Blended and Beautiful Boutique in Denver, a business she initially opened in late 2019 before shutting down in 2020 and reopening again in 2021. 

“I started it out of my home, and I could not have people in the home during the pandemic, not knowing how severe it was going to be,” she said. “So I closed and then I reopened in January 2021. And I actually got a storefront. It was on a little dead end road in Denver.”

In September, Ayers saw an opportunity when the owners of The Olive Branch on Main contacted her and asked her if she would be interested in buying the building and running a boutique out of it. 

“They knew that I’d had one in Denver for several years. And he said, ‘I think you’d be the perfect person for it,’” she said. 

Ayers was interested. She’d previously lived in Stanley, and she liked the idea of owning a business in Stanley’s downtown. She decided to partner with a friend, Wendy Pavel, to open the shop.

“I’d always had an eye on downtown Stanley because I thought it would be super cute. Reminds me of like Mayberry,” she said. “And the biggest thing was like I wanted to bring more life into our small town of Stanley. it’s been on my heart for the last couple of years, and finally, like I said, in September it was placed in my lap.” 

Ayers opened her second Blended and Beautiful Boutique storefront at 103 S. Main St. at the end of October.

“We have a wide variety from water bottles, tumblers, to jewelry, clothing, home décor, and then we also do custom T-shirts, bags… and then our vendors have a little bit of everything,” she said. “We have sweets. We have savory snacks. We have home décor. We have a boutique upstairs. We have custom wreaths, custom signs…  I like to refer to us as a one stop shop.” 

The boutique also includes a toy room, with plushies and other toys for children.

“So we have something literally for everyone including the kids,” she said. 

Ayers said that she wanted to open a boutique because she wanted a job that would allow her to have her children with her.

“I just wanted to make some extra money whilst staying at home with my kids and not having to work a real job,” she said. “I always wanted to bring fashion and affordability to women in the area.”

The boutique differs from her Denver location in a few key ways. 

She said it’s more of a gift shop.

“And all of our gifts are really affordable. I try to keep everything below $50, including my vendors’ prices. Most of their items are fairly affordable too,” she said. 

She said that business so far has been slow, but she thinks it’ll pick up during the holiday season.

“I think that the biggest thing that we struggle with these days is that everyone shops online,” she said. “And so many people I think forget about little shops like us. And so when we brought all of these items into our shops, we really thought about the competition online that we face, and being able to bring some of the similar items at similar prices.”

“I think that’s really what keeps us in business, is the fact that we have good quality items, but our prices are not astronomical like a lot of stores,” she added