Thursday, October 16, 2014
GIRARD
Inside Caylea’s Helping Hand, you might not find Caylea right away.
You might expect her to be behind the counter when you walk in, and you’d be right. But you’re going to have to bend over it to see her, sitting on the floor playing with her toys.
It’s 3-year-old Caylea’s mother, 22-year-old Kaylyn Flowers, who opened the secondhand store Oct. 8 at 237 N. State St. to help people who may have been handed a hard set of circumstances by life.
Stop in from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday if that’s you or if you just like to find bargains.
Flowers named the store after her daughter and runs it with the help of her fiance, Tim Tonkinson, and she’d love it if you’d browse around.
Her car seats, in perfect condition, are $20. Her changing tables are $15, and all night stands and chairs are $5. A wooden table with bench seats is $100, and it would look great in any kitchen or dining room. There’s a nice couch, in good condition, for $35, and TVs, microwaves and lamps that all work.
“I test every product before I put it out,” she assured recently from one room of the two-room store, which housed the furniture, books, dishes and glassware.
In her other room, she has a crib for $50; baby gates, walkers, high chairs; car seats; and a lot of clothes.
She prides herself on her inexpensive clothing.
“I might be only 22, but life’s been pretty hard,” she explained. “Even if you go to Goodwill anymore, it’s ridiculous. I have pants for 3 or 4 bucks.”
Her dresses are $5 — even prom dresses. You can pick up a pair of tennis shoes for $3, and a pair of boots for $5.
In the front room with the clothes are toys, DVDs and tools. A screwdriver costs $1.
As Seen on TV? A Snuggie can be had for $3.
Flowers raffles off baskets that families can make themselves and bring in to the store. Half the proceeds will go to the store, and half to the family. She will make a basket for the family with store items if she sees the family can’t afford to make its own, she said.
She has a mailbox near the checkout counter. If you are on the lookout for a special item, write it down and put it in the mailbox. She’ll keep an eye out for it.
Flowers’ inventory is, she says, an eighth of what she owns. She buys it at auctions, storage-locker sales and yard sales. Her family and her fiance’s family also have helped with inventory.
Flowers, who is from Campbell but has lived in Girard for three years, said she opened her store because she wanted to find a way to help people who are struggling, much as she’d struggled at times as a single mother.
So the young entrepreneur left the traditional work world where she’d been a server at a Waffle House, a cashier at Love’s Truck Stop in Hubbard, and a cashier at the Speedway on Belmont Avenue “for a few months.”
Owning her own business “feels a lot better,” she said.
“It’s stressful, it really is,” she said. “But at the end of the day, I sleep a lot better knowing that I helped somebody and there’s no drama. It’s just me, my daughter and Tim.”