Country Casuals, the high-end women’s clothing and accessories shop that’s been a fixture on Boca Chica Boulevard since it opened in 1967, has survived hurricanes, fire, peso devaluations and ceaselessly changing styles, but the years have finally caught up.
Dave and Jayme Gelfer picked a location, across from where H-E-B stands today east of I-69E, that in the late 1960s was barely developed. The original Country Casuals grew to encompass 10,000 square feet of sales floor during its peak, with 45 employees, a shoe department and massive back-office operation. Today the nearly 6,000 square feet of floor space still seems sprawling for an independent retail store.
On a recent Monday, however, most of the merchandise was gone. The “going out of business” sign had been hung above the front entrance the previous week, according to Robin Gelfer Pierce, who confirmed the sad news: Country Casuals is going away. Robin and her husband, Mike Pierce, co-owned the business with her parents for many years, and were in charge of running it and The Corner, the surrounding shopping center that the Gelfers built and which Mike manages. Robin’s father died in 2016 and her mother on Aug. 9 of this year.
“Mom and Dad started it and we joined and spent our whole working life here, and enjoyed working with my parents and doing everything for it,” she said. “But it’s time. It’s time to let Country Casuals go.”
The store has served multiple generations of the same families, relationships that predate the current location, from the time when Robin’s grandfather leased shoe departments in other stores in Brownsville and throughout the Rio Grande Valley, Corpus Christi and Laredo. Some of her current vendors’ grandfathers even did business with her grandfather. Country Casuals’ two managers, Julie Garza and Norma Weaver, have each been with the company over 40 years.
“These are my family, these ladies,” Robin said. “It’s really hard.”
Tears are not uncommon among staff and owners these days. The same can be said for the customers, many of whom have been coming from Brownsville and Matamoros for decades to shop, people Robin considers not just customers but friends.
“They’re coming in teary and some cry and some want to share stories,” she said.
Truth be told, Robin and Mike had been planning to close down the store and open something smaller in the same complex, but with a new name and rebrand to try and attract a younger demographic while ideally retaining longtime regular customers. Jayme, who was still coming into work as late as last February, had given her blessing to the plan. Still, there was hesitation.
“This isn’t a new idea for us, it was just a timing thing,” Robin said. “We just couldn’t take it away from my mom. Plus, it’s our livelihood.”
Although Jayme wasn’t managing the store, keeping it going got a lot harder when she passed, Robin said. Plans for the new boutique ran headlong into the pandemic. The launch was delayed to spring 2020, then to fall 2020, then to spring 2021. Neither was COVID kind to Country Casuals’ bottom line. Of course, the store had to shut down for a time like everyone else, and it took some time to build that business back up again.
Mike and Robin have decided to put the new retail venture on hold for a while until they can catch their breath and weigh their options. Meanwhile, their organic citrus farm and mail-order retail company, Resaca Grove, is still in operation. Grapefruit, cakes and pies, and sauces and jellies are available on their website.
“That’s more of a seasonal thing,” Robin said. “For sure I’m keeping that going, because we do a lot of corporate gifts and shipping at this time of year.”
Robin, who has known Country Casuals since she was a child, said closing it feels like losing a dear family member, though its time has passed. Mike noted that the sun is setting on that type of business model.
“The trend for retail stores, and this has been over the last 15 or 20 years, the trend has been smaller, smaller, smaller,” he said. “The only big retail stores that you see are the Dillards, the Macy’s, JCPenney — those kinds of companies. For independent stores, this store is like three times bigger than it should be.”
Online retail changed everything, Mike said. Having spent most of their lives in the brick-and-mortar retail business, Jayme and Dave never quite wrapped their heads around the idea that anybody would actually want to buy their clothes and shoes online, Mike said.
“We always felt like you had to touch it, try it on, do all that stuff, and people aren’t doing that,” Robin said.
Keeping the store stocked even now is an expensive proposition, though nothing like it was in the days before peso devaluations forced downsizing, she said.
“Back when my parents started and everything was growing, and this store built the shopping center basically, it was like feeding a monster,” Robin said. “Whatever you bought, it would just sell. All retailers were like that here.”
She and her husband can’t wait to be done with the going-out-of-business phase, and have more than 50 years of racks and fixtures, shelves, obsolete computers, adding machines and miscellaneous business equipment and artifacts to unload. And although they’re stepping away from this aspect of retail for now, it’s possible Robin and Mike will be back with some sort of venture beyond Resaca Grove, though no promises.
“I don’t need a new business if it’s not going to be really successful,” Robin said. “I don’t need a hobby. Our wheels are turning. It’s just we need a break before we figure it out.”
