27 Apr Retail Therapist: Meet Lynnsey Flowerday
With an artist’s eye for detail and composition, setting up shop comes naturally to Lynnsey Flowerday, front gate and retail manager at Iron Mountain Hot Springs.
A native of Dallas, Texas, Lynnsey Flowerday came to Glenwood Springs in 2013 to attend Colorado Mountain College’s acclaimed photography program; she graduated in 2015. In the interim, Flowerday fell in love with the area and decided to stay for good. “Outside my office window, I’m looking at mountains, the river, blue sky. It’s pretty hard to beat,” she said. “Plus, I love my job and the people I work with.”
As front gate and retail manager at Iron Mountain Hot Springs, Lynnsey is head buyer, merchandiser and manager of the gift shop, a space that also doubles as admissions. It’s the first stop for visitors coming to soak the hot springs. “It’s been a challenging year,” she said, referring to COVID and the management of people moving through the small space. “To give visitors more room, we went from three registers down to two. As things start to open up, my goal is to staff a register specific to retail so anyone who wants to a make retail purchase can do so quickly and efficiently without waiting in the same line as people checking in.”
With Flowerday as manager, the bathhouse gift shop has taken on a more spa-like ambiance. Bath, body and home products feature chemical-free, all-natural ingredients. Top sellers include apothecary items such as sage wands, essential oils, tinctures and the hot springs’ own line of soaps made with the geothermal water. “We ship our mineral water out to a company that makes it into soap exclusively for us,” Flowerday explained. “It’s been a huge hit with customers who keep coming back for more. I can’t keep it in stock!”
Other items that fly off the shelves include Colorado-made products. Stickers are small, affordable items that make fun souvenirs. The ones by Atomichild, a company based in Fort Collins, features designs with an edgy outdoor vibe. Other products in the shop’s collection with a Colorado pedigree include Moon Bath from Boulder, Highway 82 Clothing Company in the Roaring Fork Valley, By My Hands—a beach glass jewelry company from Grand Junction, and Duck Company, a tee-shirt maker from Arvada.
Flowerday is thrilled that her choices are resonating with customers, “Seeing that people love the products I’m bringing in is so rewarding,” she said. But the job is not without its challenges. “It’s a small retail space and we don’t have enough storage to house a lot of backstock. I always wish I could put more out, but I’m excited for our future expansion when we’ll have 70 percent more retail space.” Flowerday, along with visitors will have to wait a bit longer as the Iron Mountain Hot Springs expansion which includes the addition of several more soaking pools and reconfigured facilities isn’t expected to be completed until spring of 2022.
With the coming warmer weather, Flowerday is looking forward to an upcoming scheduled closure when she and her team will do a “retail reset,” which entails putting away winter items and bringing out all the good stuff for summer including sunscreens, hats and lots of swimsuits. “We have hundreds of swimsuits. We can’t put them all out due to space constraints, but if a guest tells us their size range, we’ll bring them a selection they can try on,” she said. The best part—swimsuits are priced on average between $30 and $70—about half the cost of the going rate.
While Flowerday still loves taking photos, it has become more of a hobby. Her creative energy and well-trained eye, however, never stop roving for new items to bring into the gift shop and imaginative ideas for displaying them.
See what’s in store in the gift shop at Iron Mountain Hot Springs and plan a visit today!
Karin Gamba
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