We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brittany Koziol. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brittany below.

Brittany, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

We love the adventure of trying to find the perfect gift for someone special in unique small, local shops. When a turn of events happened in our lives, it was our dad who encouraged us to open our own shop. Cascade does not, and still really doesn’t have a lot of local, small shops. We felt that there was a strong need for a new shop on this side of town.
We attended the free business classes offered at GVSU and spoke to other friends and family that owned their own businesses for advice and suggestions.
Our plan was to open a home decor store with some gifts, but shortly after we opened our doors we quickly found that the need in our community was not a home decor store, but a gift store.
We quickly shifted our mindset and product choices and became a gift store with some home decor.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We are a family owned Gift Boutique store in Cascade run by a mother-daughter-trio.

We pride ourselves on our customer service. When you shop with us, we want you to feel like part of the family.
We feel that people are always going to pick the quickest and easiest way to do things, so we need to stand out from the big box stores. We do this by offering you a wonderful shopping experience.
We always love the adventure of picking out that special gift, so we are always ready with ideas and suggestions.
Our gift shop is well stocked with fun, unique treasures just waiting for you.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Back in 2020 we were forced to shut our doors for 3 months. We could not financially sustain our business with being closed for a 3 month period. We had to be creative and fast. We came up with the idea to promote a Happy Box. We put together our first box and offered free shipping and promoted it on our social media accounts. We prayed that we would just sell 10 boxes. We ended up selling 30+ boxes! We couldn’t believe it.
We found a need that needed to be filled. People were home and couldn’t send out birthday gifts, thinking of you gifts, sympathy gifts, etc. We discovered that our Happy Boxes met this need and we continued with it through our closure.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clients for us has been word of mouth. I think what makes us stand out in comparison to the big box stores is that we listen to our customers.
We love to talk and listen to their stories. Hear what is going on in their family, work, etc. We genuinely care about our customers and their families. I think people appreciate that and continue to come back and tell their friends.
We give a family/home vibe. Something the big box stores can’t give.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shopparooz.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/shop_parooz
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/shopparooz