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.
