01/07/2021
KATY’S KARDS website is available 24 hours 7 days a week. www.katyskards.com
First things first…who’s Katy?
“I have no idea who Katy is!” laughs Christy Ferguson. Ferguson, along with daughter Ce’Erica Allen and son-in-law, DeVario Allen, are the new owners of Katy's Kards, a party-supply store located at 1200 Court Street.
“There actually is no Katy,” says Christy. “The lady who owned this business before us is named Kim. She didn’t want her personal name tied up in the business, so she randomly picked a name out of the sky. People still come in and say, ‘Well, I talked to Katy and she said…’ and we just grin.”
While some might spend a long time deliberating the purchase of a business, the trio saw the need to keep the business in the community and moved fast.
“I saw an ad on Facebook that Katy’s Kards was being sold,” says Christy. “It was around 9 o’clock at night. I inboxed her at 10pm. I called DeVario first. He said to me, ‘You want it?’ I said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Let’s get it’. We had a meeting at 3 o’clock the next day, and the store was ours.”
DeVario and Ce’Erica were living in Atlanta at the time. DeVario was working on a rental property he owns in Saginaw when his mother-in-law called.
“We love Atlanta, but we missed our family,” says DeVario. “So when Christy presented the idea of owning the store to me, we packed everything up and moved back. It was a tornado, getting it all here. We’d bought a house in Atlanta just the year before, and I mean to tell you, my wife had just unpacked the last box a couple days before we received that phone call from my mother-in-law.
But I must say, from our first day open as a family business on June 30th to now—every hour has been worth it.”
“I thought he was joking at first,” says Ce’Erica. “I was like, ‘Sure, yeah, I want the store’. Then he started talking about the moving day, and me giving notice at my job. I was like, ‘What are you talking about? This isn’t really happening!’ It was scary at first, when it started to get real. Then it all fell into place.”
“We’re part of so many people’s happiest moments,” says Christy. “We may not be at the event, but we are part of the celebration. That moves me.”
Katy's Kards is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 3pm, with expanded hours coming in the New Year. Katy’s Kards can be found online at www.KatysKards.com, on Instagram as and on Facebook.
Part two of the story coming tomorrow!
