Laura Farrar-Pileckas opened Violet’s of Saratoga in 2007 as a women’s clothing store, a few doors down from the current location. In 2010, she started Stella’s of Saratoga, a shoe store, in the current location. One year later, in 2011, the two stores combined into the current Violet’s of Saratoga.
“We started off as a women’s clothing store, about a quarter of the size that we are now,” Farrar- Pileckas said. “We were just trying to bring new, updated fashions to Saratoga at a nice price point, and then we grew as a shop.”
The growth allowed Violet’s to increase inventory and brands. Currently, the store has
approximately 15 core brands, with new material circulating in over time. During peak times, like spring and fall, there is new inventory daily, according to Farrar-Pileckas.
“We quiet down in the wintertime, right after the holidays we’re pretty quiet,” she said. “We do some really good customer appreciation sales and we have a great audience for that. People will come in in the dead of winter and we’ll give them discounts.”
She continued, “so we’ll clean out in the wintertime, and then we’ll be right back up again, fresh and new, in March with the beginning of our spring inventory. Then we’re obviously busy in the summer, so we’re really stocked up for summertime because we have that consistent clientele coming through the door daily, and then we get another surge of inventory for fall, so this time of year, August, is when our fall merchandise is coming in.”
Farrar-Pileckas also said that this track season has been their best so far. “I’d say there was a little lull the first week,” she said. “Since then, we’ve been going strong. We’ll see a little bit of quietness this week, and then we’re strong for Labor Day weekend.”
She added that one of the nice things about her clientele is that once track season is over and the dust clears, people will still be back to shop for fall goods.
She said that last year, on opening day for the Travers, power went out in the store due to a blown transformer, which was not an easy or quick fix, taking about five hours to complete. Meanwhile, they had to go about their business with no artificial lights, air conditioning or computers.
“Lots of stuff like that happens all the time, and we never shut our doors,” she said. “We’re open all the time, seven days a week, closed for major holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter.”
When thinking of what it would take for them to close their doors, Farrar-Pileckas said that it would take snow or ice, but then corrected herself to say only ice, because “locals come downtown snowshoeing and they’ll come right in this door. ”
“Right now, I’m really enjoying how the system is going,” She said. “We’re constantly communicating with customers and they seem to be enjoying our buying selections and our brands that we offer.”
For the future, Farrar-Pileckas said that she has no specific plans at the moment outside of keeping the status quo, but would love to open a new location.
“I would want to market the same type of store, so I would want to take Violet’s and put it somewhere else,” she said. “So maybe I would change it a little bit to the demographics there, but I wouldn’t want another location on Broadway because I don’t want to compete with myself.”
She said that in the past, they have tried to expand online, but they found they were best at a more face-to-face, brick and mortar type of store. She said “we’ve tried online, but what we really enjoy is the contact with the customer. We don’t really want to be sending stuff all over the place. We really want the customer to be able to come in and enjoy the experience, try the merchandise on and really get that one-on-one experience.”
For more information, visit www.violetsofsaratoga.com, or contact Laura Farrar-Pileckas at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
