Madrona consignment shop switches hands

Natalie Anderson and Adam Peart started Driftwood Boutique a decade ago, growing a local clientele in the market for affordable high-end fashion.

The husband-and-wife team stepped away from the Madrona business this spring to return to their home state of Utah.

“They just built a winning formula,” said Julie Moberly. “It’s clearly a neighborhood gathering spot.”

Moberly took over the boutique consignment shop on June 1, changing the name to Jules and making minor cosmetic alterations to the interior.

“There’s a fine balancing act between putting your stamp on something, which is every business owner’s dream,” she said, and preserving those features that made the business successful to begin with.

Moberly grew up on Mercer Island, and moved back to the area from Boston seven years ago. She’s worked in adult community education, as an education reporter in Harvard, Massachusetts, and most recently as a personal chef. She has two adult children living in the Pacific Northwest.

She shopped at Driftwood for years, and had asked Anderson and Peart to let her know if they were ever considering selling the business. Moberly got the call six months ago, she said. Anderson was pregnant with her second child, she said, and wanted to move back to Utah to be closer to family.

“This is just like a little curated jewel box,” Moberly said. “It’s just 500 square feet.”

The inventory is full at Jules currently, Moberly honoring all of the existing consignment agreements when she took over the boutique. Jules offers a 50-50 split with consigners, with a 60-day consignment term, instead of 70 when it was Driftwood. People can still opt to have whatever doesn’t sell donated to the Southeast Seattle Senior Center, which about half of consigners do, Moberly said.

Jules has 300 hangers, she said, and that’s the cutoff for taking on more products.

“We don’t want it to be cluttered,” Moberly said. “We don’t want it to read like a thrift shop.”

Moberly said the clientele Jules is designed around are active and successful women who frequently need to find designer clothes, jewelry, shoes and handbags at a fair price for their next business trip, work party or any other social engagement where people need to look their best. She said a lot of her clientele spend time in New York, and bring back great items that they eventually part with in order to add something new to their wardrobe.

Consignment items are usually marked down at a third of their retail price, after she’s researched each product on eBay and Google.

“It’s a science, not an art,” Moberly said, adding a consignment item gets marked down after 30 days.

Her long-term plans are to add more items, so people who don’t find the right dress or shoes might still be able to walk away with a small treat for themselves or a gift for a loved one.

“A lot of women shop just for retail therapy,” Moberly said. “Retail therapy is a real thing.”

She also wants to do more flash sales and other events, having just started a Friday happy hour 4-7 p.m. every week. This Friday, June 15, she’s marking all denim products down by 25 percent.

Customers were attached to Driftwood, Moberly said, and one of her strengths that she expects to hone more and more with Jules is her ability to build relationships with people.

“Seattle’s in such transition, people feel like these community locations are very important for maintaining a sense of happiness and comfort.”

Jules is located at 1135 34th Ave. Find out more at justsayjules.com.