With Dale Budde

Up until March 22, 2017, butterflies had very little meaning to me, and purple wasn’t my favorite color. On that day, my dad passed away in hospice care. A purple butterfly was placed on his door to indicate to the staff and visitors a patient had gone on to a new life. That butterfly would later have a significant place in my world.

 

As a mother of three sons, when our first grandbaby was a girl, I went overboard buying lots of pink and bows. My inner child was born again, too, and I fell in love with all things children - toys, gifts, clothes…and monogramming on the latter as much as I could. Upon my husband Neil’s retirement in 2018, we decided to move to Franklin to be near our grandchildren.  Neil had worked in online news all of his life and was the founder of the Wall Street Journal Online. My career was in sales, and I worked with financial institutions selling marketing products to banks and credit unions. Neither of us had a retail background… So, then started the journey and the birth of the Purple Butterfly in downtown Franklin.

 

Purple Butterfly is more than a retail shop… It’s an experience. We opened our doors in March 2018, just before Easter. I thought it would be so fun to have live bunnies for the children to come see and hold, so I purchased a dozen to house on our front porch. It was wildly successful, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the children play with the bunnies. From that initial event, I knew I wanted my shop to be a place children grew up with and had fond memories of the Purple Butterfly that took them into adulthood. 

 

We host lots of special events throughout the year and they are generally an idea that pops into my mind, then I figure out how to pull it off.  We’ve had everything from a children’s Christmas pajama party with cookies and milk, to Unicorn rides in the shop’s front yard. One mom told me her daughter said, “See mom, I told you they were real!” (referring to the white horse with a horn attached to its mane and flowers around its neck).

 

I take a personal interest in my customers and have shared their joys and cried tears with their sadness.  We have built a strong sense of community over the past five years at the Purple Butterfly. It’s not uncommon for customers to tell me my shop is one of their happy places and from the minute they walk through the front door, they know it’s a special, caring place.  

 

I am past retirement age, and my friends always ask me when I will retire. My response is that I am retired from the corporate world, and when Purple Butterfly starts to feel like work, I’ll retire. Until then, I’m having fun touching the lives of so many children and adults. Learn more and shop at purplebutterflykids.com.