In late fall, the population of Boca Raton, FL, doubles as snowbirds — mostly retirees with homes or condominiums in this wealthy coastal city — return from their summer visits to New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and other northern states. They arrive just in time for the holiday shopping
season, and when they do, Artie and Sue Ellen Sussman — owners of Best Wishes of Boca — are ready for them. “I love when we decorate the store for Christmas because it makes it so beautiful and sparkly,” says Sue Ellen. “Then people come in, and you get the ‘gasp’ reaction.”

Best Wishes of Boca specializes in “lovely gifts at affordable prices,” says Sue Ellen. The store’s suppliers include high-quality gift companies such as Waterford, Swarovski, Wedgwood, Lenox and Spode. The store also does well year-round with jewelry, Judaica, Michael Aram tableware, and knives from Henckels. In recent years, the Sussmans have added china and giftware from Haviland imoges, Versace and Boehm. “We’ve been handling better and better product,” notes Sue Ellen. “I’m very pleased with where we are now.”

Best Wishes’ Christmas offerings include holiday collections from its regular suppliers — a number of the store’s vendors have added ornaments to their collections — as well as products from companies devoted specifically to Christmas, most notably, Christopher Radko. Sussman says the line has become a huge favorite with Best Wishes’ customers since the store began carrying it in 1999. It now carries Radko year-round and displays the company’s orna-ments on its “Radko wall.” Says Sue
Ellen, “We copied the ornament wall from the Radko showroom. You have to adapt the showroom, but you can’t always do it exactly. You try to get as many ideas as you can, but you don’t always have the space.”

The Sussmans maintain the Radko wall throughout the year to attract collectors and add ornaments o it at the end of summer as the holiday shopping season gears up. The Sussmans also showcase their Radko pieces on special display trees crafted with parallel, horizontal metal rings instead of branches.

Sue Ellen — like many of her customers — is a former New Yorker. She was a teacher and her husband was an engineer when they moved to Florida with their three young children in 1976. They soon found that jobs for engineers were hard to find and that teachers were poorly paid. The couple decided to go into retail until the economy improved and purchased Best Wishes of Boca — which was then a stationery store. “We thought we’d run the store for a few years, and then sell it, but we loved it, and we never left,” says Sue Ellen.

In the years since then, Best Wishes has grown along with the area it serves. Sue Ellen recalls that when they bought the store, Boca Raton was a small, sleepy town. “This was the only shopping center in town,” she recalls, adding that the demographics of the town have also changed dramatically. “There were no kids in Boca Raton then. Now, my son Robert is an obstetrician in town, and he’s very, very busy.”

The store started out as a stationery store, but the Sussmans gradually added jewelry, tableware, gifts and Christmasproducts to its merchandise mix and, after a time, eliminated stationery.

In the early days, says Sue Ellen, she asked her salespeople to make lists of what people were buying. “But now we ask our sales reps, who we’ve known for decades. We also go by the motto,
‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.’ When you have major lines, the products are so beautiful that you’ve covered every need you could possibly want.” The store owners also get new ideas by attending gifts shows in Atlanta, Dallas and New York and jewelry shows in Miami and Las Vegas.

Sue Ellen attributes many of the store’s more recent successes to her daughter, Zari, a website designer and computer consultant. A decade ago, Zari was working in New York City, designing websites for major companies such as Paine Webber.

She suggested to her mom that Best Wishes should have a website and should begin selling online. Sue Ellen recalls that she herself knew nothing about the Internet at the time, but went along with her daughter’s suggestion. “I said, ‘Oh, OK, just do it.’”

Today, online sales are an important segment of Best Wishes’ total business, and Zari works full-time overseeing this growing division. The Sussman’s third child, Ian, also works in the family business.

Loyal Customers
One of the secrets behind the success of Best Wishes is the loyalty of its customers, says Sue Ellen. The original customers from 30 years ago sometimes shop in the store along with their adult children. “It’s wonderful and satisfying when that happens,” she says.

The old-fashioned style of promotion — word-of-mouth — works just fine with Best Wishes’ loyal customers, but the store also advertises on television and online. “We don’t find newspaper ads to be as helpful as in years past,” Sue Ellen explains. Of the Sussman’s 14 full-time employees, many have worked at the store for decades; two have been there for 31 years. Only a few part-timers are
added during the holiday season.

One thing Sue Ellen loves about the store is that its product categories are “happy” ones. “My son once said, ‘It’s not like we’re dealing with people who have just broken a washing machine — we’re selling happy things,” she says, noting that she tells her staff, “You have to be honest. You don’t just make a sale, you make a customer … and they come back through the decades.”//