Daily Sitka Sentinel

Brenner's Packing Up Clothing, Gift Store

By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer

    One of Sitka’s oldest businesses will close its doors this month, marking the end of its 65-year life as a Lincoln Street clothing shop.

FOND MEMORIES – Bonnie Brenner, seated, and her daughter, Stephanie, talk about the 65-year history of their Lincoln Street clothing store, which is closing.  (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

    “It’s the end of an era,” said Stephanie Brenner, who helps manage Brenner’s Fine Clothing and Gifts with her mother, Bonnie Brenner.
    The store is holding a month-long sale to clear its inventory by April 1 to make way for an existing Sitka business, Silver Basin, to relocate its shop from Lake Street.
    Customers stopping by Brenner’s in the past few weeks have expressed sadness that their favorite place to shop for clothing and gifts is packing up, but the owners said their feelings are more mixed.
    “It’s a big decision,” said Bonnie, who has worked in the business for 50 years, first as an employee and later as an owner. “It took a long time to come to the decision, but once I made the decision, it’s been easy. I love this store, but I think it’s time for a change. I think it’s a great opportunity for something new and different and I think it will be exciting in here.”
    Bonnie started working in the shop, then called Vi’s Apparel, in 1962 or 1963. She says she has enjoyed the business, spending time with local customers and meeting visitors from all over the world – but it’s time to move on.
    Bonnie said she’s also proud of the business she built, and is pleased to see how its reputation has grown over the years.
    “The business is a destination for people who live in Alaska,” she said. “They get off and that’s where they’re going to go and shop. I think we have good customer service and greet people, and I think that’s important. ... We have very loyal customers.”
    Bonnie said she needs more time for her family; and Stephanie and her husband will be managing the family’s store at Icy Strait Point, the cruise ship destination near Hoonah, where they have operated a Brenner’s shop the past four years.
    Mother and daughter say they’ve rolled with the changes in Sitka over the years, including the changes in purchasing habits, the increases and decreases in the cruise ship market, and the rise of internet shopping, but changes in their lives have signaled that the timing was right to close the Sitka store.
    The store was known as Vi’s Dress Shop (the “Vi” for owner Vi Mitrovich) when it was relocated to Sitka from Nome around 1949. Its first location was a 200-square foot space on Lincoln Street in a building where Dapcevich Accounting now stands, and that was destroyed in 1966 downtown fire.
    The next location for the store was in the Cathedral Arms, in the space now occupied by the Fisherman’s Eye gallery.
    Bonnie started working there at age 16 for shop owners Vi and Duke Mitrovich.
    “In those days, they sold men’s formal wear, women’s ballgowns, men’s suits and real dressy stuff,” Bonnie said. “But at that time people used to go to the Moose and the Elks and dressed up all the time.”
    Bonnie said it was a good job for her. “I loved clothes. I used to babysit to make money so I could buy clothes,” she said. “We were busy in those days.”
    In those days the shop owners did not make trips to industry markets to select merchandise, but instead bought the stock sent to Duke by manufacturers and salesmen.
     “He’d say send me stuff – he never picked out a lot of things,” Bonnie said. “I never knew there was a better way. ... I learned later, after going to college, that there was a better way.”
    One day, when she was 19, she gave her parents, Jim and Eileen Reeder, some good news, “‘Guess what? We can buy the store!’” Her parents didn’t have any retail experience, but that didn’t bother her. “I thought I knew it all; little did I know.”
    Jim Reeder had been working as a power plant operator on Japonski Island since the late 1940s, and Eileen raised her children at home. But they ended up making the big decision to buy the business as a family in 1967, with Bonnie working there for a few years before she got married and moved to Ketchikan. After starting her family, Bonnie continued to return home to help out in the summers and at Christmas.
    The business moved down the street to where The Cellar is located now, before settling down in its current location in 1981.
    Bonnie and her family moved back to Sitka in 1980, and she started working in the store, joined by her teen-age daughter Stephanie in 1987.
    Bonnie had her eye on the business, and eventually she and her husband, Steve, were able to purchase it from her parents in 1988.
    The store’s final chapter was the 2000 remodel for the millennium, when the gray cedar shakes and vinyl awning were replaced by a village-style storefront.
      The business has had its moments over the years, one of the most memorable was the day the cruise ship Prinsendam caught fire in the Gulf of Alaska Oct. 4, 1980. The passengers escaped in lifeboats and were brought to Sitka with only the clothes they were wearing when rescued by the Coast Guard.
    “We had to open the shop, and they could buy anything they wanted,” Bonnie Brenner said of the hundreds of passengers who came ashore. “We were told to run a tab which was paid by Holland America. ... It was unbelievable to us.”
    The store has changed over the years from featuring a lot of formal clothing for women to a mix of casual and office attire and accessories.
    “We used to sell a lot of hats, fancy hats,” Bonnie said. “How we’ve turned around is amazing.”
    Bonnie had always planned to retire at age 70 and hasn’t quite reached that point. But she’s currently needed as a caregiver, which is now her priority. “It’s too stressful to have a store, too,” she said. Eventually, she hopes to spend some time traveling, which is one of her passions.
    Stephanie said she’s a long way from retirement, but is excited about the opportunity that came up four years ago to manage – with her husband Andy Stoner – the Brenner’s satellite store at Icy Strait Point, which sees more than 150,000 visitors a year. The shop in the 100-year-old cannery carries a number of handmade items and clothing in a much smaller space than the Sitka store.
    “As you know, Sitka has seen a decline in the amount of visitors over the last four or five years,” she said. “That has affected our store, it’s affected Lincoln Street. When this opportunity presented itself, we tried it, and we loved it. ... It’s a learning process. I enjoy interacting with visitors as much as I do our local customers (in Sitka).”
    But the decision to close the Sitka store is not about the decline in business, or the cruise ship industry, but other pressing needs. Bonnie said she expects she will work a little and volunteer in the community, and not fully retire.
    She said she has been grateful for the community’s support over the years, and most recently when she announced the store is closing.
    “I’m so humbled, how people have come in and said how much they liked this store,” Bonnie said. “I’m speechless about what people have said to me, the outpouring: how they’re sorry, but they understand. It’s heartwarming. I just want to thank everybody for supporting us forever.”