Courtesy of Heidi Owen West
By Jill Nagy
Heidi Owen West’s entrepreneurial spirit manifested itself early.
At 16, she began working at concessions at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and “I loved it…loved working with people,” she said.
She continued at SPAC through high school and college. Also, while still in high school, she worked at Filene’s department store in Albany. When she was in college, she worked with her mother, Kay Owen, herself a serial entrepreneur, at her mother’s business, Indulgence Cafe and Bakery.
Owen West describes her mother as an “entrepreneur at heart” who left a state job to open the cafe and bakery. She sees a “lineage of entrepreneurial spirit” running through her family.
Mother and daughter abandoned the bakery and cafe in the late 1990s to open Lifestyles of Saratoga, a women’s apparel store at 436 Broadway. The store, according to Owen West, offers a “curated selection” of sustainable women’s brands, the best known of which is Eileen Fisher. The store carries several small batch brands and tries to meet the needs of women of all body types and sizes and offers a broad selection price-wise, Owen West noted.
As Lifestyles began bursting its seams, the space next door became available and Caroline and Main was born, a shop catering to a somewhat younger and more contemporary clientele. She begun designing some of her own products, working with local designers, and bringing in local bands of items like jewelry and candles.
Meanwhile, a seating area at Lifestyles began filling up with men, West recalls.
“They wanted their own space,” she said.
That led to Owen West’s third enterprise, Union Hall Supply Company. Lots of leather and dark wood, a tasting bar with local beers and ciders, “an environment where they want to stay a while,” and a selection of “the clothing that men live in.”
Now, almost 30 years since opening Lifestyles, Owen West is about to open a second Union Hall Supply Company, this one at Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany. This is her first business venture outside of Saratoga.
“It’s a big change for our organization and an exciting one,” she said. “It’s a learning process.”
The new shop is three times the size of the Saratoga outlet. It is also a half-hour’s drive away, a little different from three stores on the same block. For now, it’s “all hands-on deck” for a mid-October opening.
Owen West can look over her four-store empire and say, “I own it all.”
Actually, it is owned by an LLC, she clarified, but “I run the whole thing.”
Although her mother has been gone for 10 years, Owen West remembers her as a person “with a lot of vision, who took a lot of risks.” Working along side of her, “we taught ourselves and each other.”
Owen West may run the whole thing, but she is assisted by a team 20 to 30 employees, “a highly trained and very knowledgeable staff.”
She is thinking now about developing a consistent way to train new staff.
Owen West said that she “absolutely” plans to keep all three Saratoga stores. For now, she has no plans to expand further but, she noted, “I’m not good at sitting still.”
She is a hiker, trying to climb all 46 of the Adirondack High Peaks. So far, she has conquered 15 of them.