A family-owned boutique has opened at Friendly Center in Greensboro.

After six years of operating the boutique Poppy & Co. in Eden, owner Julie Summers has made the move to Friendly Center in Greensboro.

The main motivation behind the move: Greensboro provides the business with more opportunity for growth, she said.

"We met with the leasing manager prior to getting started here, and I just asked all the questions about the traffic count, the number of people that come through here every day, month and year," Summers said. "Those numbers are significantly higher than what we have in Eden."

Phil Stanton, Summers' father and the co-owner of the store, said he is confident many of their customers will follow them to Greensboro.

"We did a survey and we asked our regulars what do they do on the weekend and they said we go out of town," Stanton said. "So, we asked them where do you go when you go out of town? Probably over half said we go to the Friendly Center on the weekends."

Summers said so far, the survey results have been accurate.

"We absolutely love our space here," she said. "We have been so busy. Our first week here was insane and it's been like Christmas every weekend."

Poppy & Co will continue to focus on selling women's clothing and apparel, but Summers has made some changes in what the store carries.

"We actually got rid of Simply Southern," she said. "The Southern trend seems to be … slowing down, so we are finding that our basics is something that we kept. We do very well with that so just plain colors, comfortable wear, the stuff you would run errands in, and then we added in the more 'occasion' wear."

Summers said the decision to provide more occasion wear was inspired by the move from Eden.

"The girls out there, we work on farms and that kind of thing, so the fashion there would be different than in the city area," Summers said. "Moving forward here, we have a lot of people who need business casual, work attire, occasion wear for wedding, church that sort of thing."

Prices range from $25 to $60.

"We have basics that start around $25 for tops or short or pants," Summers said. "Then we'll have occasion wear that a dress could be $50 to $60. We try to keep our prices reasonable. I would say like a good median is $30 to $40."

Additionally, the store continues to carry permanent jewelry.

Permanent jewelry is welded directly onto the body and customized specifically for the wearer.

"We have our own branded line," Summers said. "So, it's like earrings, bracelets, necklaces. I work with a supplier from Georgia, and they will help us design our own pieces and kind of curate what we're looking for, for the season."

Summers said the average price of jewelry at the new store ranges from $6.99 to $15 dollars.

Summers said the store does carry some higher end brands of permanent jewelry that can go up to $65.

"That's going to be like gold filled, lifetime warranty, sweatproof, waterproof," Summers said. "We call it life-proof jewelry that you don't have to take off."

Additionally, the new store also has a coffee bar just like the old one back in Eden.

"We have a lot of regulars back home in Eden that they're just addicted," Summers said. "So that's probably going to be our top thing."

She added that many of the new Greensboro customers are starting to learn about the coffee.

"They're usually shocked when they come in and they're like 'oh I didn't know it was a full coffee shop,' but we've had great feedback on that," Summers said. "We have already gained quite a few regulars who have been in, especially the locals that work here. They come in before their shifts to grab coffee."

"Phyllis" also will be making the trip from Eden to Greensboro.

Phyllis is an alias Stanton came up with in the early days of the shop.

"When we got started, I was doing a lot of customer service emails and whenever you're interacting with a woman and you put down at the end of the email or whatever, Phil, they're like what does a guy know about clothing?" Stanton said. "So, when I changed it to Phyllis, I got a totally different response."

Stanton said that customers who came to the store eventually put two and two together and realized that he was Phyllis and the nickname has stuck.

"They came to watch the Facebook Lives because they wanted to see Phyllis and whatever he was up to that night," Stanton said. "Whether he was holding a dress up or holding a shirt up, so that was a fun thing."

Poppy & Co. began in 2015, when Summers starting working on her senior project in high school.

"I did my projects on the effects of social media marketing for a small business," Summers said. "My dad had an online business, and we took that and ran with it, doing local pop-up shows. "

The pop-ups ended up being successful. So successful that Summers decided to drop out of college to pursue it full-time.

"That turned into people asking us, 'Well, do you have a store we can shop with? Do you have a website?'" Summers said. "So, we expanded from pop up shops to a website, and then from the website we ended up adding our store in 2019."

Since then, the business has continued to grow, and Summers said she looks forward to the next chapter.

"I'm excited to meet new people, create new friendships," Summers said. "See old faces and get to see their reaction to the new space."

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