Rustic Lilly brings the boutique to customers

Rustic Lilly: Bringing the boutique to the consumers

By Johanna Armstrong Innovation

In our world of online commerce, combined with the decline of malls and brick-and-mortar stores, Sharri Martyn’s traveling boutique, Rustic Lilly, is a breath of fresh air and a nice throwback to simpler times and the practice of traveling merchants.

Rustic Lilly is based out of an old, refurbished bread truck from Idaho. Martyn found an ad for the truck on Craigslist and flew out to Idaho to purchase it, driving it back over the Rockies to Minnesota where Martyn transformed it into her new business. “It’s like the ultimate re purposing,” she says.

While visiting her daughter in Austin, Martyn saw some traveling shops based inside trailers. “That kind of gave me the idea and then I just went with it,” Martyn says. After work ing in retail for many years she wanted to start her own store but, when she final ly committed to the idea three years ago, she wor ried, with the number of businesses leaving Fergus Falls, that it wasn’t a good time or place to start a business based in the town. Instead, she compromised: Rustic Lilly spends plenty of time in Fergus Falls, but can also travel out to the surrounding community and the Twin Cities. “In stead of having a storefront where people come to me, I go to festivals and I go out in the lakes area,” she says.

Rustic Lilly is named af ter Martyn’s daughter, Lilly. “I lost my daughter in a car accident, she was 16 years old. Not many people know that,” she says.

Nearly every weekend Martyn and her store are out and about at different fairs, festivals or markets. In the winter, when it’s too cold and snowy to set up outside, Martyn takes Rustic Lilly to a number of indoor events in the Twin Cities, where she can just drive the boutique into the showroom floor. She also participates in Fergus Falls’ holiday art and artisan market.

After Christmas, Martyn and Rustic Lilly take a break for a couple of months to resupply. She has vendors and companies that she likes and buys many things from, but she also goes out to get more unique things. “I get a lot of jewelry that is made in Minnesota, I try hard to get local stuff,” she says. “It takes a lot of time, I spend a lot of time trying to find things that are not in other stores in the area.”

The boutique carries all kinds of things in women’s fashion. “In the summer time, I carry a lot of linen stuff, nothing that’s really super dressy, things that are a little more on the casual side,” Martyn says. Rustic Lilly provides everything from jeans and leggings to tops and wraps, purses and jewelry. This spring, some of the boutique’s special items included rompers, ruffle-bottom dresses and embroidered denim shorts.

In addition to Rus tic Lilly, Martyn recently opened Rustic Lilly’s Hip pie Sister on Main Street

SUBMITTED TRAVELING MERCHANT: Sharri Martyn’s Rustic Lilly calls to mind the ancient tradition of traveling merchants as she takes her shop around Minnesota, peddling beautiful and unique wares.