Apr 14, 2008

Canterbury Shoppe offers variety of itemsBy Dave SharosSuburbanChicagoNews.com

If there’s a need for a gift at any time, for any occasion – there’s a good chance the Canterbury Shoppe in Naperville will have what you’re looking for.

Gail Andrews, who has operated the downtown shop for a dozen years, said her passion to operate a gift shop was spawned from a love for Christmas.

“I have a friend named Cynthia Baer who, like me, shares a passion for Christmas,” she said. “We both worked years ago in the food industry and with Kraft Foods, but we each had this tremendous love for Christmas – the gifts, the ornaments, the blown glass. We researched the idea for a store a number of years, and eventually decided to go out on our own.”

Andrews, 52, said that she and Baer opened a Canterbury Shoppe 15 years ago in Barrington. When the Naperville store opened, the two partners decided things would work better to own and operate each store independently, though both continue to share merchandise as well as advertising.

“We are too small to become a big corporate company, but too big to operate efficiently unless we became two independent stores,” Andrews said. “We still talk and coordinate things together all the time.”

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