Front Porch Boutique is St. James’ newest fashion retailer, and opened its doors to local shoppers early last month during Tax Free Weekend. The business offers a slate of western wear-inspired clothing, skincare products, and accessories. Many of the products shoppers will find are developed and designed by owner Lisa Stubblefield and her four daughters, who help her run the business. Other products in the store come from other regional western wear boutique shops.

Stubblefield described her clothing brand, Midwestern Merch, as “Midwestern and rural-inspired products and patterns for the small town, farming, Midwest.”

While Front Porch Boutique is new to town, it has been a project of Stubblefield’s family for more than a decade. After graduating from the University of Missouri where she studied textile and apparel, Stubblefield worked as a product developer for major apparel brands like Bass Pro Shops and Nike.

Stubblefield enjoyed the experience of developing clothing products, first for major retail brands, and now for her own.

“I think that first job right out of college intrigued me, and it just kind of stuck with me,” Stubblefield said.

Stubblefield opened Front Porch Boutique’s first brick-and-mortar location in 2012 in Rolla, where she began creating designs and developing her brands. After a nearly 10-year-stint in Rolla, Stubblefield decided to sell the storefront in 2021 as she was busy raising four daughters.

“My four girls kept me really busy, and they kept getting into more and more sports and rodeos, and all of that stuff,” Stubblefield said.

While the storefront itself was closed, the online store stayed busy. While she was operating Front Porch Boutique as an online-only store, Stubblefield was able to develop her own original brands and get them in the hands of more retailers across the country.

“When I sold my storefront, we just did online shopping. We were really able to grow our own brand with other stores and retailers,” Stubblefield said. “Because we’ve been creating (our brands) for four years, we’ve really grown into a lot of stores. So, from small boutiques to large farm and home stores, we’re in a lot of local retailers as well all over Missouri.”

According to Stubblefield, Front Porch Boutique’s products are shipped almost daily to retailers across the United States, and even some in Canada.

Now that her kids are older, Stubblefield’s four daughters have become important partners in the family business. They helped conceptualize and design items, including Mighty Fine Western Body Care, Stubblefield’s skincare line of body lotions and sprays. Some of the scents were developed with help from her daughters.

“They help me create brand items like small accessories, air fresheners, keychains and stuff, and then they have their own lotions and body sprays,” Stubblefield said, adding that the line of skincare products is a labor of love for her family. “Our lotions and body sprays are really a passion of ours.”

Developing the scents, finding a United States-based family manufacturer and navigating the government approval process to get the products cleared for sale took years.

Stubblefield’s daughters, aged 7, 11, 13 and 15, also help out with another important side of the business–handling social media.

“They love doing funny videos and pictures for the retail store,” Stubblefield said, adding that being an active part of the family business has helped her kids develop life skills. “We love them learning the business and helping it grow, and it helps them learn how to talk to people in a business setting.”

But at the end of the day, they’re still kids, so the large packing warehouse that serves as Stubblefield’s new storefront isn’t just a place to pack orders, it’s a place to let off steam after school.

“They’re still young, so they don’t totally want to work all the time. They get distracted easily,” Stubblefield said. “They come over here and jump rope or play basketball and then they also pack orders.”

Stubblefield loves what she does, but she says that owning a boutique business, like any other, comes with its own set of challenges.

“I definitely enjoy it because I feel like it’s something that I created from scratch, but it has the same headaches as any other business,” said Stubblefield, highlighting inventory management as a sometimes precarious balancing act when running a business like hers.

“Inventory is a big stress because you can never quite get the exact right amount. No one is perfect at it,” Stubblefield said. “We have local retailers that carry our products, and we would rather them be successful with the products that they trusted us to order, so we don’t stock our store with a lot of our own stuff, and we ship to retailers.”

Stubblefield and her family are pleased to be operating a retail storefront once again, and eager to be at work in St. James.

“We’re just so excited to be here and be open. My girls love it, and we love seeing old customers and new faces. Everybody just seems really excited about it,” Stubblefield said.