After two years in downtown Marshfield, Bella’s Boutique & Antique Attic has closed its doors.
The boutique, featuring antiques, vintage dresses, and more, will be relocating to Attic on the Avenue in Appleton. Owner Kimberly Bronk started out inside Cranberry Creek before personally financing the opening of Bella’s in October 2016.
“I have a catering business that I’ve done for 13 years and I waitress at a restaurant,” she said. “Trying to find people to work at the store was just such a struggle for me that it became too much.”
Bronk said she has a lot of respect for small business owners because of the difficulty of operating a store. Although her boutique could have stayed open, the lack of qualified workers was a hurdle.
However, Marshfield and the many people she met will be missed. She is also grateful for the support of Main Street Marshfield. “They really do a lot to support the stores, with the wine walk and the car show,” she said. “I’ve had so many people come in and go, ‘I’d never think to shop down here.’ But the stores down here are amazing.”
At her niece’s store in Appleton, Bronk is renting a space and will be returning to car shows to sell her vintage dresses sourced from the UK. Her next show will be Mississippi Mayhem in West Salem, September 7-8.
“It’s so much fun for me, I absolutely love it,” she said. “A lot of the dresses nowadays are so short…The [vintage] dresses, you can wear them to church, you can wear them to work, and when you go out with your girlfriends…It’s nice to bring that whole thing back to make women more beautiful.”
