Lynne Jones is not just a Business Owner, She's a Community Steward

After 21 years Lynne Jones knows something about her clientele. She keeps a special kind of Sharpie for one gentleman, another gets a special kind of envelope, but those who love her the most are buying presents for children.

“I have a pretty good track record,” says the owner of on Main Street in Westhampton Beach. “Tons of mothers, grandmothers and aunts come in wanting to know what to get, and I know what to get them.”

Ahh, customer service, no small thing in an area not far from a surfeit of big box stores and filled with residents who can easily make their purchases online.

Jones says some customers come in looking for help, and some want to be left alone. And that’s OK.

“It’s easy here,” she says. “Instead of the frenzied atmosphere at a chain.”

This graduate of Westhampton Beach High School must be doing it right, because she has been around to see the evolution of Main Street from a swinging strip punctuated by the infamous Marrakesh—which attracted club kids from all over the island, and was her next-door neighbor—to a more family oriented downtown. It’s development included a proliferation of real estate offices that are now starting to merge. She hopes to see more retail; sometimes she feels a little alone at the far east end of the thoroughfare.

A college English major, Jones first idea was to open a bookstore, but the proprietress of the Open Book did not want to sell. Across the street was the card store.

She and an investor approached the owner, who said, “Yeah, I’ll sell,” and she was behind the counter within a month.

The choice was fortuitous. She loves the business. The merchandise can never go bad and rarely goes out of style.

“Expectations are different, too,” she says, “There’s no doubt what you’re going to get.  When you buy a Barbie, you know what’s in the box.”

She looks around her shelves piled high with dolls, children’s books, games, practical jokes, colorful candles and stuffed animals.

“It’s a pretty happy business,” she says.

And of course there are the cards, which she picks out one by one, not only from card companies, but also from artists who sell her one-of-a-kind pieces.

Which means she knows her stock. If someone comes in looking for a card with, say, a goat on it, she can lead him or her right to it.

Community Commitment

After having nearly every summer person, weekender or year-rounder walk through her store, Jones knows the importance of giving back. She’s been on the PTO, the chamber of commerce and the business advisory board at the school. Volunteer work includes Maureen’s Haven, serving as a trustee at the Westhampton Presbyterian Church and running the box office and working as an usher at the Hampton Theater Company; she’s a trustee at the Hurricane Educational Foundation, which is now raising money for a greenhouse for the school.

But her baby is “Kids on the Green.” Every Tuesday in the summer for the past 12 years she and her friend Toni Oppenheimer have organized a series of performances for children, and their parents. People bring blankets and picnics to see magicians, singers and bands.   

It comes back. Customers tell her they go out of their way to support her mom-and-pop business, because where else are you going to find out that squinkies are the silly banz of 2011?