GILROY
– A healthy dose of dreams mixed with a dash of elbow grease and
imagination has led to Dilly Dally Alley, Gilroy’s newest
children’s boutique.
GILROY – A healthy dose of dreams mixed with a dash of elbow grease and imagination has led to Dilly Dally Alley, Gilroy’s newest children’s boutique.
Gilroy moms Kori Hitchcock and Dawn Guillen opened the First Street shop, which combines upscale children’s clothing with every day necessities, in August. Three months later they can’t believe how the community has embraced the store.
“People have been so supportive,” Guillen said.
Hitchcock, 30, and Guillen, 37, are amazed that Dilly Dally Alley exists at all. Ten months ago it was just a musing. Over a sushi lunch in January, the new moms, who both left jobs to stay home with their infants, discovered they shared a mutual dream.
“I said I would love to open something. And Dawn said let’s open something,” Hitchcock said.
“I said that has always been my dream, too,” Guillen said.
“And we just did it,” Hitchcock said. “It’s amazing that we did it.”
While both women have worked in sales previously, opening a shop presented new challenges.
First, they filed the necessary permits, navigating their way through county and city buildings with their daughters in tow. They said at times, they weren’t taken seriously.
“People would see our kids and think we were a joke,” Hitchcock remembered. “We said we were going to do it, and we did it and here we are.”
They found a cozy nook for the shop in a shopping center, which also houses Curves, Got Memories? and the Palace Day Spa. However, the space needed a lot of work.
Their husbands renovated it from installing and plastering new walls to laying down muted carpeting.
Along the way, Hitchcock’s and Guillen’s vision never wavered: to offer Gilroyans a place where they could buy quality children’s clothing and accessories along with toys, blankets and necessities, including diaper bags and breast pumps. At the same time, the shop would enable them to bring their kids to work.
“The main reason we did this was we wanted to do something and bring our kids to work. We didn’t want them to be in daycare, and bring a taste of this to Gilroy,” Hitchcock said, gesturing to the purple, pink, green and blue sweaters, dresses and jumpers that line the soft sage walls.
“We wanted to have a place where you could shop where you live and where you own a home and you could get what you need without driving 50 miles in either direction,” Guillen said.
To find the perfect clothing, toiletries and toys, the women say they went on a hunting expedition, interviewing every children’s boutique owner within a 70-mile radius.
“We wanted to get stuff that was reasonable, but nice,” Hitchcock said.
They go to market quarterly, buying their merchandise wholesale from manufacturers.
“There’s so much stuff to look at,” Hitchcock said. “Everyone has something different and something cute.”
The women say they are still learning their customers’ needs, which they say change from week to week.
In the meantime, they are loving their newfound success. But they admit owning a store is harder than they anticipated.
“It is so hard and I am so tired,” Guillen said.
“But I take pride in this,” Hitchcock added. “This is something I’ve done. We’ve created something out of nothing.”
Dilly Dally Alley is holding its grand opening celebration today. The shop is located at 1321-B First St. in Gilroy. It is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. It can be reached at 846-6939.
