Passion for fashion

Peyton Ganus has always been passionate about fashion, but for a while she chose not to pursue it as a career.

“Growing up I was kind of torn,” said Ganus, who grew up in Chelsea. “I wanted to do something with fashion, but I also always wanted to be a nurse because my mom was a nurse.”

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She started to study nursing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham but found she was not passionate about it. Ganus said she remembers leaving class one day and calling her mom about changing her course of study. Her major became communications management, a broad subject she said would help when she opened or managed a store of her own.

She said she knew starting a business would not be an easy process, but when a window of opportunity opened in September 2015, she took it. That window was when Ganus’ high school sweetheart and former University of Georgia football player Jake Ganus proposed.

“When my fiancé proposed to me, he did it on the football field after a [University of] Georgia game,” Ganus said. “After that happened, we started gaining a lot of followers on social media. … I thought, ‘This is the perfect time to really do something and start something we always wanted to do.’”

Jake and Peyton Ganus got married on June 24.

As her following on social media started to grow, Ganus and her mother worked toward opening. They were starting from scratch, obtaining a business license, finding vendors and setting up their website.

“It took us about a month and a half to get everything finalized and getting ready to open,” she said.

Her online store, Thirty-One Boutique, launched in March. The decision to open an online, rather than brick-and-mortar, store was influenced by her social media presence, Ganus said.

“We really wanted to target my following on social media,” she said. “That’s why we started doing the online store rather than the retail store, because we can ship anywhere and reach girls anywhere.”

The home base for Thirty-One Boutique is her parents’ home in Chelsea, where inventory takes up a spare bedroom and an office. Ganus said she knows they will eventually outgrow that space and need a warehouse or other storage area, but for now it is nice to have everything at home and get help from her family.

“Everyone has been just so overwhelmingly supportive,” Ganus said. “From my family, my sisters love helping me out, my parents love helping me out. … Jake, he has been the most hands-on. He tells everyone about the boutique.”

Jake Ganus will help package orders, promotes the boutique on his social media accounts and makes sure to talk about the store, Ganus said.

“Since we got married in June, he is like, ‘This is mine too!’” she said.

Ganus also enlists the help of her two younger sisters, 17-year-old Riley and 14-year-old Macie. Sometimes that means bribing them with clothes, Ganus said.

“First and foremost, they love trying to take my clothes,” she said. “But I always tell them if they help me out or if they model for me or package clothes, I’ll give them a top or something.”

Because Riley is in the target age group for the boutique, Ganus said she will sometimes ask for her opinion on potential outfits. When she shops for clothing brands, she looks for items that are trendy but also modest.

“[I want clothes that] help girls feel comfortable in their own skins but not revealing too much,” she said. “When I’m picking out clothes, I look for things that I would be comfortable wearing. I try to find that happy balance between being modest and being cute.”

The type of clothes she shops for is also influenced by her favorite Bible verse, Proverbs 31:30, which inspired her boutique’s name. The verse reads, “Charm is deceitful, beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

“I really wanted it to be something sentimental, something I was passionate about,” she said. “I thought for days on it.”

To remind everyone of the message of that verse, Ganus said they have stickers that read “Proverbs 31:30” placed on the packages.

Although opening her own store took a leap of faith, Ganus said Thirty-One Boutique has been a great way to share and grow her love of fashion.

“I’m really looking forward to just growing and to continue building Thirty-One Boutique and just seeing where God takes me,” she said. “It’s just been really exciting to see something that had always been a dream of mine kind of turn into a reality. And it’s crazy to look back and think about when I used to dream about having my own store.”

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