Carol Yenne of Small Frys in San Francisco, CA

When Small Frys, a Bay Area kids’ clothing staple since 1984, went up for sale in 1991, Carol Yenne jumped at the chance to make the store her own. “The store is close to my house,” she remembers. “It was time for a change.” So the former Levi Strauss & Co. manager purchased the business—and, a year later, the building—and she’s owned it ever since. “It’s been a lot of fun,” she notes. “My daughter, who’s in her 30s now, helps me manage it.” After 23 years with Small Frys, Yenne credits both her background in clothing and close relationships with brand representatives and local designers with helping the store stay afloat. “We try to support local brands and small companies with things that you don’t find in other places,” she points out.

-Samantha Sciarrotta

What are some of your bestselling brands?
Probably the three best clothing brands for us are Tea Collection, Zutano, and Petit Lem. See Kai Run is great for shoes. I also do well with Mayoral and other brands that have been here for a long time.

Are there any brands that have been with you since the beginning?
Le Top is probably the one that’s been around the longest. Robeez has been consistently good.

What are some of your most popular toys?
We sell a lot of the new baby toys like Manhattan and Lamaze. For older kids, we do well with Playmobil, Green Toys and a lot of things like Zoobles and Under the Nile soft toys.

What has been the best brand you’ve added in the last year?
We’re always adding new brands. One that we do really will with is All Good Living. They’re organic. They do cute little one-pieces and shirts that say “I [Trike] SF” with a picture of a tricycle instead of the word. That’s been a good addition this year. Two years ago, I would have definitely said Chewbeads.

What is your customers’ mood, spending-wise?
Are they optimistic, or are they a little more frugal? It depends on the timeframe. They feel better than they did two or three years ago, but they don’t feel as good as they did before 2008.

What’s the biggest challenge that comes with owning a store?
There are two. One is costs that you can’t control, particularly government things like taxes and insurance. The government continues to find ways to tax small businesses in the most amazing ways. The other is probably the impact of the Internet. Customers come and just want a demonstration. They’ll look at stroller or a carrier and then buy it online. There’s a lack of understanding about how Internet purchases negatively impact local brick-and-mortar stores.

How do you make your store more desirable than the Internet?
We’re making some tough decisions not to compete directly. I know that it can be frustrating for our customers who want to come in and try every baby carrier and order it online, but it just doesn’t make any sense to us to have them all when certain ones are so heavily discounted online. Even though people want us to have them, when you actually look at the dollars, it doesn’t make sense anymore.