Nora Grace-Flood photo
Bloom owner Alisha Crutchfield with a gift box she designed for the holidays.
Alisha Crutchfield gathered a blank journal, pens promising that “You Got This,” a homemade candle bathed in “blessings,” a chain necklace with the reminder that “Black Femmes Aren’t Your Playground” — and then labeled the overflowing arrangement the perfect present for “the person who loves self care and spending time alone after a long day of work.”
In other words, Crutchfield, the founder and owner of a year-old Westville lifestyle boutique called BLOOM, curated that care package with herself in mind.
She did so to show how she busily assembles her top-selling products in personalized baskets for those seeking professional help upping their gift giving game — and as part of a broader effort to urge New Haveners to shop local this holiday season.
Crutchfield put together that small-business-boosting gift box right before a small-business-boosting press conference held on Monday afternoon at her 794 Edgewood Ave. shop that centers on building personal wellness and communal wealth.
Mayor Justin Elicker, Deputy Director of New Haven Economic Development Cathy Graves, Bankwell Financial Senior Vice President Rob Mallozzi, WTNH Vice President Richard Graziano, Avelo Airlines Communications Director Jim Olson, The Community Foundation’s Joseph Williams Jr. and Yale University Properties Director David DelVecchio all filed into BLOOM at the start of the week to join Crutchfield in pointing out the pluses of buying from small, community-based businesses like hers.
Cathy Graves alongside Monday's speakers.
“After turkey and a little football, shopping is one of the things that we do,” Graves said, calling post-Thanksgiving spending sprees a “time honored tradition.” And, she said, “when you buy local, you do more for the community than you realize.”
Joseph Williams Jr., who works with The Community Foundation Mission Investments Company, bought a bright blue and green checkered cuff link at BLOOM Monday after speaking during the presser.
“Men don’t have too many accessories,” he told the Independent. “I don’t like to have things that everyone else has — I ask myself what’s gonna distinguish me so I can stand out.”
Shop local, he said, so you can find the unique pieces that will help you make an independent stylistic statement.
William's cuff link: "A male statement."
“A dollar spent locally goes way further than a dollar spent at one of the bigger chains… A dollar spent at a place like BLOOM means a huge, huge percentage of that dollar actually stays in our community and gets recirculated,” Elicker agreed.
“Look around us here,” Elicker said, gesturing to the display of candy canes, Christmas lights and gift wrapped goods bringing festive spirit to BLOOM.
“This is just one example of the 160 storefronts that we’ve done ribbon cuttings for in the past year,” the mayor said. He added that there’s an abundance of places to hunt for the perfect present throughout the city, as well as “countless numbers of Brown and Black business owners that oftentimes historically have not had the resources and support and infrastructure to open a business” whom New Haveners can support this season. Elicker also listed a series of free holiday events for families to enjoy over the coming month. Scroll to the bottom of this article to check out that list.
A festive gift display at BLOOM.
“Westville Village itself is a great little shopping district!” Graves said. She celebrated BLOOM in particular as “just kind of buried in the neighborhood… it just sits right here in the neighborhood and everyone loves it.” Rather than driving to strip malls, New Haveners might spend their shopping sprees browsing their own streets, she suggested.
Crutchfield, in turn, credited and thanked New Haveners for helping BLOOM blossom over the course of its first year in business.
“I just have been so welcomed by the New Haven community,” she said.
Crutchfield has also welcomed several other nascent as well as long-standing local businesses and organizations into her own shop.
In addition to selling some of her own items, like BLOOM-branded notebooks, Crutchfield picks up products from local artisans and creators and provides a space to sell them.
For example, her Monday-made gift box included artisan soap from Elm City Botanicals; a candle from New Haven based-business Bathe in Blessings; and a cursive necklace made by designer and New Haven resident Arvia Walker.
She took those items straight off her New Haven-made stocked shelves. Typically, she does so after a customer calls in asking her to make a personalized box for someone special. The client offers a brief description of who they’re looking to buy the gift for — maybe someone with a stressful job or a love for the outdoors — and Crutchfield picks out presents she thinks will suit them.
“The vendors we partner with are the pulse of BLOOM,” she said, and community is the soul. “It’s about bringing community, culture and commerce together.”
"We Have So Much More In Store"
BLOOM sprouts candy canes and new greenery in advance of the holiday season.
BLOOM is not just a retail space, but a flower shop, cafe, aromatherapy spa, local art gallery and community gathering space. So, in addition to selling local goods, Crutchfield has also established a space that can and has hosted everything from meetings of the NAACP, City Seed and Collab to wedding receptions to, as Monday demonstrated, press conferences.
Over the course of this year, Crutchfield said she has learned not to shy away from embracing that BLOOM is a “multi-concept gathering space.”
“A year ago I couldn’t say that elegantly or confidently,” she said. “I was still trying to figure out what I was creating for our community.”
She said the biggest hurdle in starting a small business like hers is first getting people to visit the space. Once they do, she takes feedback to understand exactly what the community needs, and just as she does with her personalized gift boxes, curates the space to match them.
For example, Crutchfield said in the early months of opening BLOOM she quickly realized that New Haven’s many organizations and groups and activists needed spaces to meet. She had originally imagined BLOOM as offering co-working space, but she soon started focusing on figuring out how to make her space flexible and accommodating of bigger groups for full community meetings rather than just individuals browsing their laptops.
IfeMichelle Gardin, the founder of Elm City Lit Fest, told the Independent in a separate Monday interview that BLOOM is one of her favorite places to work independently as well as hold meetings for Lit Fest.
“I’ve had a small private gathering for my birthday, book-signings, poetry events, exhibitions as well as musical events,” she said as she reflected on what makes this Westville boutique so special. “Alisha’s great at transforming the space to accommodate whatever you want. There are also several nonprofit orgs that also have staff retreats” at BLOOM.
Crutchfield shared that her goal now after passing her first year of flourishing on Edgewood Avenue is to buy the building within which her business is located — and then to use the space to help other aspiring entrepreneurs test out their business acumen.
“I want to curate another flow of small businesses,” she said, and establish a soft launching pad where they could find temporary housing for their venture before flying off to their own nest.
“They could get support from me and other business community cultivators while testing out their brick and mortar dreams,” Crutchfield put it.
In addition, she said, she’d like to put in suites for business professionals coming into New Haven on the top floor of the building so “they can stay here and get to indulge in BLOOM.”
Next, she said, she wants outposts at Union Station and Tweed Airport.
The idea, she added, is always to refrain from becoming “a shopping center” and to stay “in the neighborhood.”
“I have succeeded here at BLOOM because of the community,” she said — because of people like Gardin who have made BLOOM their own personal place to build more opportunity and joy at a local level. “And,” Crutchfield added, “we have so much more in store.”
In addition to shopping small and local, here are some other ways to celebrate the holidays here in New Haven, according to Monday’s presser:
- Saturday Nov. 26 is “Small Business Saturday,” which will feature a small business pop-up at The Shops at Yale (1042 Chapel St.) between 12 and 4 p.m. Attend for pictures with Santa, an ice carving demonstration, and the carolers. The Ives Library will also hold a Holiday Bazaar at 133 Elm St. during the same time period.
- On Dec. 1 is the annual Holiday Village Winter Market on the Green before the tree lighting. Those who arrive between 4 and 8 p.m. and get a Covid or flu vaccine for their child six months or older can be entered into a raffle to win 4 tickets from Avelo Airlines.
- The Westville Anti-Mall Shop Small Holiday Market and tree Lighting will occur on Dec. 10 between 12 and 6 p.m.
- Fantasy of Lights, a nighttime drive-thru holiday light show, is happening at Lighthouse Point Park between now and Dec. 31.