Lilac Lane Origins...

April 18, 2022

Written by Breonie Staal

April 18, 2022

Written by Breonie Staal

A near Easter outfit disaster and an introduction to a Montana influencer... there's a lot to the story of how Lilac Lane was born.

First pop-up at a local coffee shop, 2018.

It was the Saturday before Easter 2017. I was watching the dirt road for any sign of the UPS truck. My daughter was 3 months old, my son was 2 ½. I had a vision for our Easter. I wanted coordinating outfits, dress shoes, bowties, the whole deal. Specifically, I wanted my daughter to have white booties and an Easter bonnet.

Looking back, I can’t tell you why I was so obsessed with her having a bonnet and white booties. Literally no idea. I can tell you that I now recognize I was struggling with postpartum depression or “baby blues”. For some reason, it was really, really monumental that she have a bonnet and booties.

Saturday evening rolls around and finally, the UPS man arrives. He hands me a small package. The booties are there, but not the bonnet. I tell him teary eyed that I’m supposed to have another package, a baby bonnet for Easter. He looks again, but nothing.

I’m sobbing (again, no rational explanation for this) and my kind my husband is offering to drive me 2+ hours to the nearest Target or mall. But it's too late to make it there in time. I’m seeing a lost cause. All my Easter dreams ruined.

About 45 minutes later, the UPS man returns in a cloud of dust. He’s found the teeny tiny missing Easter bonnet package and saved Easter for a very tired, puffy faced mama.

As you can see, despite my outfit vision materializing, the photos I had imagined, did not. This is what my kids thought of the whole thing.

In fact, Google reminds me each year that not only did I not get a good picture that Easter day, I also apparently re-dressed up my infant the next day to try and get a better photo…..I have no recollection of this but Google remembers all. That photoshoot was also a fail.

We did a little better this year with the photo. :-D One of the kids had a cold, so our plans for church and family gatherings didn't happen. We were in pajamas till the afternoon when we pulled it together for an Easter tea party. It wasn't my perfectly planned Easter, but it was lovely.

In October 2018 I met photographer and social media influencer Camille Clausen (Montana Moonlight) at a Baby Expo. At the time, she had a traveling children's boutique and I fell in love with EVERYTHING. Camille is an amazing person and as I gushed over the clothes, she encouraged me to start my own business.

I couldn't shake the idea.

Because motherhood is really freaking hard. Sometimes, you just need ONE thing to go right. Sometimes you just need to find that one thing for family photos and you need it to not be an ordeal.

Maybe I could make that experience a little easier for local moms.

Lilac Lane launched November 2018 doing vendor shows and pop-up shops. I had a full-time job as a news anchor at the time and it seemed like a crazy thing to do, starting a pop-up business. It was.

Those early vendor shows actually didn’t go that well for me. Local businesses- Meg-A-Latte, Style Uncorked and All the Rage allowed me to do pop-ups shops and those gave me the push to keep going. Through one of those events I connected with the owners of Service Drug Pharmacy, they had a space to rent and that is where we have been since June 2019.

Moving in July 2019...still "popping up" in our own space.

We started with two brands and I worked the shop with my two little kids at my feet whenever I could spare a couple hours to be there. Once, they got into an all out roll-on-the-floor brawl while I was trying to ring up a customer. (I'm not sure she came back.) A lot has changed since then.

Lilac Lane Spring 2022

We now carry 75+ brands. We have five part-time employees. I'm a little better at taking photos, haha! We have a website (work-in-progress) and wonderful customers who shop with us for their special photos and occasions. It brings me and the wonderful ladies that keep our little shop running, so much joy.

Are there times I wonder if our little shop will make it? Yes. Retail is the hardest job I've ever had and I've dabbled in quite a few career fields. I'm still learning, and the learning curve for a business owner is steep, stressful and expensive. But seeing our clothes on children around town, being tagged in photos from across the country...it makes me think that my original mission to make just one thing a little easier for mamas- well, maybe we've accomplished that. <3