Terri Fain isn’t really from Sapulpa, but she’s familiar.
“My family was a Red Fork family, my daughter went to Allen Bowden, and I was a Girl Scout Leader here in Sapulpa, so yeah, we know the area,” she says, laughing.
And it looks like she’s going to get to know it even better, as she takes the reins of the newly-renamed Heart of Route 66 Vintage Market, which, true to its name, is supposed to become a destination stop on The Mother Road.
Fain, who purchased the shop from Lisa Green on November 1st, is looking forward to putting her own personality and touch into the store.
Already, her store is catching plenty of personality, as evidenced by the gorgeous tree that greets you when you walk in, or by the Christmas Tree Farm window display that you see while traveling on Dewey Ave.
Lisa Greene, for her part, isn’t going anywhere, the owner of Vintage Rose Boutique and Flowershop is still going to very much be a part of the new store. “I just needed to get back to a point where I could focus on the flower shop and not have to worry about running a whole store,” she told Sapulpa Times in October.
Fain is jumping in with both feet, but she isn’t going it alone. Her 31-year-old daughter has joined her as co-owner and can often be found in the store when she’s not working for her main employer, SeneGence International.
For Fain, the dream of owning and running a boutique like this has some deep roots, stretching back all the way to her great grandparents, who ran a similar store in the Red Fork area.
When asked how she feels about being another vintage boutique shop on a street that’s known for it, she’s not intimidated—she’s thrilled.
“I don’t see it as any big deal, having more than one shop like this down here,” she says. “When people ‘go antiquing,’ they want to go to a town and visit every store. They will start at one and just walk up the sidewalk. They don’t want to just go to one; they want to go to several.”
In her mind, having several vintage and antique shops in downtown Sapulpa is a plus, because it helps turn downtown Sapulpa into more of a destination spot.
“We just need a little bit more, you know, like a good quality restaurant down here.”
Fains believes it’s good for the owners of the antique shops on Dewey Street to get to know each other and be able to send customers to each other because they all have a different flavor.
“I had someone in here who was looking for military stuff. I don’t have any of that, but I sent them to Dewey Street Market,” she said. Hopefully, they got what they were after.
Fain says that Sapulpa is unique because of our heritage and the fact that we still have so many of our older buildings.
“A lot of these small towns started around the same time, but over time, we’ve retained our older buildings, and they haven’t. So Sapulpa has something special because they don’t have them anymore.
The building that the new Vintage Market sits in has two floors, and Fain’s plan is to fill as much of as she can with new vendors. She has at least eighteen or nineteen new vendors downstairs now and is working on preparing the upstairs for an additional “20 or 30” vendors. “And that’s still not getting it too crowded,” she says. “But it would get them in here and get them to look around and relive their childhood memories.” Fain looks around, obviously lost in memories of her own. “Y’know, to be a kid again.”
Heart of Route 66 Vintage Market is located at 105 E. Dewey, and is open from 10 am to 6 pm on Monday through Saturday.
