Mother and daughter team open new Rocky Point boutique

Mother and daughter team open new Rocky Point boutique

From left, Cindy and Maddie Miller in their newly opened shop. Photo by Kyle Barr

By Kyle Barr

Though opening a store takes an adult mind for business, a child’s sense of creativity doesn’t hurt.

Mother-and-daughter team Cindy and Maddie Miller, who is 11 years old, cut the ribbon on Macked Boutique, a new women’s and girls’ clothing shop in downtown Rocky Point June 9.

Customers line up at the register to check out.

“It’s amazing now to have it open and see all the people in it,” Cindy Miller said. “It’s awesome to see what we had in our heads come to life.”

The front of the store is dedicated to women’s and girls’ clothes from 1-year-old to women’s plus sizes. The rear of the store is dedicated to their design space that includes stencils and paints for kids to create custom shirt designs for parties, using whatever stencil and color paint they want.

For Christmas last year Miller received a Cricut — a fabric, wood and stencil cutter — from her husband, Mike Miller. After making stencils for custom designs, the mother and daughter thought about making a business out of it, first by hosting parties so kids could customize their own shirts, then later for an overall online store for young girls clothing. It wasn’t long before Miller had the idea for a brick-and-mortar location, and with the new boutique, the Miller family hopes to establish themselves as a focal point for girls’ and women’s clothing in Rocky Point.

Maddie helps other kids design their shirt.

Maddie came up with the idea for using glitter when painting the shirts, something that Miller said has become a big hit.

“We went through a lot of learning experiences,” the mother said. “There was the time when we first put paint on the shirt and it got paint on the table because the paint went through the shirt.”

Miller’s husband, a Nassau County police officer, helped work on putting in the boutique’s new floor before the store opened. He said while his wife is stressed from all that goes into opening a new business, she is excited to see where it takes her.

“She’s amazed,” Miller’s husband said. “I think it’s a new adventure, and it’s going to be very exciting.”

Maddie helps the other kids when it comes to painting shirts, and she is already experienced in customer care. When one customer asked her mother where she could find the clothing sizes on a selection of shirts, Maddie stood on her tiptoes, reached up to the shirt in question and showed her each of the shirt’s sizes.

“It’s cute because she’s learning a lot of about business,” Miller said. “It’s teaching her the difference between price and cost, what’s the margin, how do you price things, how do you tag things and other different applications.”

Paints and glitter available to those designing their own T-shirts at Macked Boutique in Rocky Point.

Maddie has started to learn the fundamentals of operating a business from her mother.

“You have to multiply [cost] by 2.5 to get the price, and the difference between what you are charged and what you sell it for,” Maddie said. 

Though even beyond the business aspect, Maddie said the experience of first helping the online shop and now opening a store has been fun, and that she looks forward to helping out with the business.

“I like the clothes that I get to wear, and I like helping the other kids with painting,” Maddie said. “I love it – I love the boutique.”

Photos by Kyle Barr