Junior League boutique won’t repeat

Daniela Mohor

Friday, Sept. 21, 2001 | 4:52 a.m.

Standing next to a rack of sweaters in the Repeat Boutique, store manager Jean Cheek carefully folds clothes and puts them into a box. Nearby, piles of hangers are ready to be taken out.

"It's sad," Cheek keeps repeating, barely holding back tears. "There are some nice people coming down here."

Fifty-three years after it first opened its doors, the Repeat Boutique, one of Las Vegas' first thrift stores, is going out of business. It will close on Sept. 29.

Opened by the nonprofit Junior League to help raise funds for community projects, the boutique used to make good profits, official say. But a relocation to a larger space two years ago raised expenses, and increased competition cut into revenue. The shop lost its profitability.

"With the big store came the big rent, the big utilities, the big payroll expenses,"said Theresa Minden, chairwoman of the Repeat Boutique committee. "So we had to reevaluate this fund-raiser for the organization."

Until it moved to the corner of Maryland Parkway and Fremont Street, the boutique earned up to $ 15,000 a year. That underwrote most of the $17,000 in education grants the league gives out annually. This year, however, the store started losing money. With no real budget for advertising and the competition of for-profit thrift stores such as Saver, the committee saw no solution other than closing, Minden said.

It was a hard decision for league members and the store's paid staff to accept. To them, the store is as much a service to the community as it was a fund-raiser.

"They wanted to come down here to help this community, but it didn't work out that way" said Cheek, as she sobbed.

Every day, Cheek said, homeless people, low-income families and single mothers from surrounding neighborhoods come to the store looking for quality products they otherwise couldn't afford.

Lillian Knittle is one of them. Knittle, an unemployed cook who lives nearby, frantically searched the racks during the store's final sale. "People need this place," she said. "I don't have money to buy new clothes."

Carlos Marquez, a dishwasher at the Orleans, agreed. "The store was a big help for many families in this area," he said. " People like us can't afford to go to malls. Here we found many good things for a low price."

The boutique carries donations of new Marshall Rousso-brand clothes.

Some charities have turned their thrift stores over to contractors to avoid closing. Under such partnerships, the contractors use the charity's name to collect donated goods. It then gives the organization a percentage of the revenue and pays for the operating expenses.

But the Junior League was not willing to give its name away.

"It just doesn't feel right," Junior League President Louise Helton said. "As a nonprofit, we rely on the goodwill of the community, and the community needs to know that their help and support goes to the services and projects that we say they're going to."

The league has not yet decided what fund-raisers will replace the thrift shop's revenue. One alternative that has been discussed is gala dinners.

But some members hold out hope that the thrift store's closing will be temporary.

"Hopefully in a few years, we'd be able to reopen," Minden said. "Smaller probably, just to keep the tradition alive."