Owners – Cinnamon Baby Boutique – www.cinnamonbabyboutique.com

At Cinnamon Baby Boutique, you can buy couture for children. Owners Amanda Olivari and Laura Radbourne even sell the shirt that Brad and Angelina’s baby, Shiloh, is wearing in her alleged $4 million debut picture.

The boutique looks like an upper class child’s bedroom, painted with bright colours, filled with large white cabinets, and lit with boutique-style chandeliers. Since most of the clothing lines are exclusive in Western Canada, being a bit posh is appropriate.

Despite the exclusivity of their products, Olivari and Radbourne insist that wealthy parents are not their typical customers. In fact, an array of customers frequent Cinnamon Baby, from the parent who buys a barrette to the grandmother who splurges on a stroller. Prices range from the $20 t-shirt to the $500 designer diaper bag… you can buy everything from newborn to size 10 clothing to custom-designed furniture.

They are even equipped to organize baby showers, and host yoga and pilates sessions. “I do think our customer is someone who wants something unique,” says Radbourne. Being unique in Edmonton is exactly what the partners wanted.

Olivari wasn’t able to find exclusive children’s clothing for her two girls in Edmonton, so she shopped in Phoenix, Arizona. For Radbourne, Cinnamon Baby combines two of her loves: children and fashion and she thought the boutique was a great idea. The 26 year-olds were both raised in businesses: Olivari managed her grandparent’s store, Giovanni Yamaha Music School, for six years, and Radbourne worked at her grandparent’s Grande Prairie store, Ernie’s Sport Experts. They met in the marketing program at NAIT, where they soon became friends.

After NAIT, Olivari married and had two children. Radbourne became a certified nail technician, and managed a restaurant and another clothing company, but none of those jobs were her passion. In early 2005, after two years of talking about opening a children’s store, Olivari called Radbourne and said she was ready. Cinnamon Baby Boutique opened in August 2005, six months after the friends starting planning. It was named after a store called Cinnamon Girl that Olivari went to when she was honeymooning in Hawaii. She decided that if she every opened a store, the name would start with “cinnamon.”

They look forward to when they can hire people to work in the store. Right now, Radbourne works onsite most days and takes care of daily tasks such as accounting. Olivari does the purchasing from home so she can be with her girls, and works in the store twice a week. While extra help would be great, both admit that they have a close connection to their customers. “We’ve really formed a lot of friendships,” says Olivari.

Radbourne says it’s been a lot of fun because they’ve met so many great families and customers. “We get to watch people’s babies grow up,” says Olivari. In the future, these friends and business partners would like to open a maternity store, and turn Cinnamon Baby into a franchise.