By Liv Gardner
The weaving room of the Cannon Cotton Mill was packed wall to wall with the unharmonious whirring of mechanized spindles, combining yarn piece by piece until enough towels were produced to keep the American South dry for a century. The tired sighs of the workers filled the air as they watched the looms, beads of sweat plastered to their foreheads with no air conditioning to provide relief from the North Carolina humidity.
Irene Childers spent 41,600 hours in that weaving room. For eight hours a day, five days a week, she watched her machine spin as thoughts of home, her kids and where else she might like to be danced in her mind.
Then, after 20 years, she quit.
Right before she left, Irene’s husband had an idea. He wanted to start a clothing store from the comfort of their own home. Irene agreed, still weaving for the mill at the time.
“It was a big, long living room and he built this little dressing room off to the side,” said Childers. “We had homemade racks. It was pitiful.”
Then, after several years of marriage, Childers and her husband divorced, leaving the living room shop and mouths to feed completely in her hands.
A dream built in the basement
In the mid 1970’s, Childers moved her store to the basement of her house. Her daughter and now current owner of the store, Melissa Gardner, can still recall memories from her childhood home.
“I remember being little and not really being able to go downstairs because mom would have customers,” said Gardner. “I would sit at the top stair and yell down at her to get her attention to tell on my brother and sister.”
Down the flight of forest green carpeted steps that once separated Gardner from a business she would later take over, her mother had built her dream. She had filled the racks built by her close friends with pieces collected from visiting the small sewing plants scattered around the state.
“You could go and buy merchandise from the plants and then you come back and you might make a couple dollars on each item, or you might not,” said Childers.
She did this on her own for a few years while still working third shift at the Cotton Mill.
She was asked when she had time to sleep.
“I didn’t,” said Childers. “You just nap now and then.”
By 1978, Childers had remarried to a local mechanic, a widower with kids of his own. With his support, she finally quit third shift at the mill, trading cotton towels for cotton shirts in a store front of her very own.
“We started what is now Anne’s in a service station in Kannapolis,” said Childers. “The rent was $100 a month and I thought we would never be able to pay it, but somehow we did.”
To her surprise, people liked her little service station store. They liked her and they liked her clothes. Before long, they had out grown their first location, moving up the street to downtown Kannapolis.
Then, after another six years, they had outgrown their second storefront. They reopened even further up the street in a building previously occupied by the old JC Penney’s. All the while, her husband followed right by her side.
“Every place we moved to he would build me more dressing rooms and put up racks for me,” said Childers. “I couldn’t have done it without him.”
After 20 years of business, she made her biggest move yet, across town to Concord, North Carolina, where Anne’s can still be found today.
The fight against fast fashion
The 21st century has completely changed the way the world shops. A study from 2010 from the International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research found that “retailers have been forced to desire low costs and flexibility in design, quality, delivery and speed to market.” Researchers cited, “fading mass production, increase in number of fashion seasons and modified structural characteristics in the supply chain” as the catalysts for this evolution.
This change can more recognizably be identified as the rise of “fast fashion.”
Investopedia defines fast fashion as designs that “move quickly from the catwalk to the stores” and has increased in popularity over the years because it allows consumers to purchase trends at an affordable price.
For business owners like Childers, the increase in fast fashion made it difficult to maintain the same brands and business model that they had been rooted deeply in for years.
“We went from things selling for $150, $160, $180 jackets to now having a price range of around $38,” said Gardner, the current owner of Anne’s Boutique.
While the price point for Anne’s was able to evolve with the times, not all stores in the area were able to keep up with the changing industry.
“There were stores up and down the street in Kannapolis, at least ten of them,” said Childers. “Then, the discounters came in and other than Virginia’s, we’re the only other one left.”
A fashion family
Irene Childers is now nearing her 84th birthday. She still comes to the shop almost daily, working almost 20 hours a week in a business that has grown exponentially since its infancy in her living room.
In the early 2000s, she passed control over to her daughter, Melissa Gardner, who later brought Childers’ other daughter, Jill Mauney, on as co-operator.
Together, over the last decade, the trio has managed to grow their family into much more than just themselves.
Jan Burris, a local from Concord, has been a customer of Anne’s from the very beginning.
“Irene is a person that once you meet her and talk to her, you automatically become friends,” said Burris. “She was always there to help me and as we got closer, she understood my style and my taste and knew exactly what I wanted.”
Despite the many location changes for Anne’s, Burris always came back.
“They are just great people to be around,” said Burris. “We laugh, and if I’m having a bad day, all I have to do is go to Anne’s and talk with them and I perk up. I leave feeling pretty and like I’m important.”
While Childers, Gardner and Mauney have grown their family locally, the COVID-19 pandemic opened up new doors for the trio in 2020, leading them to new possibilities and new friends through social media.
“We were shut down for three or four days after the pandemic first started and that was enough,” said Gardner. “So, we figured we would try our hand at Facebook Live sales and see who we could reach.”
A desperate venture in unprecedented times has now turned into a thriving and successful extension of the family business. Anne’s now averages 400-500 viewers on weekly live shows and in the last year, has even unveiled their own app for customers.
“We just kept growing and growing and now we ship everywhere,” said Gardner. “We now have Anne’s family in 47 of the 50 states.”
After 44 years in business, Anne’s boutique continues to grow. Looking back on a dream that has lasted through generations and spread across state lines, Childers has so much gratitude.
“I’m most proud that my children and family respect the work that I have done,” said Childers.
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Reviving the Past: New life for the needle and thread
Liv Gardner is a sophomore at High Point University double majoring in Broadcast Journalism and Spanish with a minor in Legal Studies. For contact inquiries, please email ogardner@highpoint.edu.
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