The Fancy That Group of stores started more than half a century ago around the idea of bringing carefully curated, slow fashion to Southern Ontario. The founder’s daughter Maria Cronk, centre, owns and operates the retailer today with her daughters Alix Martin, left, and Amanda Worsley.David LeClair
When Inger Sparring-Barraclough arrived in Brockville, Ont., from Sweden in 1973, she needed to rebuild her life – for her and her three teenagers. She had left behind a financially secure but unhappy marriage and took a job in a Scandinavian furniture store in a new mall.
One thing quickly struck her in her new home between Kingston and Ottawa: she could not find shoes she liked.
Coming from Europe, where Ms. Sparring-Barraclough was used to stores carrying distinctive pieces and carefully selected styles, she thought that a curated feel was missing from Brockville’s retail scene. So she decided to open her own shoe shop: in 1974, she founded Fancy That in the same mall.
“Then she became very successful almost from the get-go,” recalls her daughter, Maria Cronk, 65, who owns what later became the Fancy That Group of shops. “People just loved her store.”
Ms. Sparring-Barraclough’s clientele appreciated not only her flair for handpicking European-inspired shoes from Montreal and other items such as barnwood furniture, but also her sense of fashion and what looked good.
Over time, Fancy That expanded into clothing and accessories, developing a reputation for striking styles. But Ms. Sparring-Barraclough never expected to lay the foundation for the three-generation family business that it is today.
Bringing her son, her daughter Ms. Cronk and two granddaughters into the company has meant navigating family dynamics and business decisions – from how the stores operate to how leadership transitions unfold – that uncovered tensions as the third generation stepped into larger roles.
“We fought a lot,” says Ms. Cronk’s daughter Alix Martin, 38, with a laugh, recalling early disagreements with her grandmother after she joined the business in 2009. “She had been doing things the same way for 30 years and I was coming in with spreadsheets and systems.”
The clash reflects a familiar dynamic where founders often rely on instinct and experience while younger family members arrive with new tools and ideas, explains David Simpson, director of the Business Families Centre at Western University’s Ivey Business School.
“Founders often struggle to see [children] as capable professionals,” Mr. Simpson says. “The challenge is balancing the values that built the business with new ideas that keep it relevant.”
Retail fashion can sharpen those tensions, he adds, because staying competitive requires a constant understanding of changing tastes, which often comes naturally to younger leaders.
Ms. Martin’s sister Amanda Worsley, 34, focuses on shaping Fancy That’s atmosphere and storytelling while expanding its digital presence through social media and online sales. “The biggest thing is the heart behind it,” Ms. Worsley says. “Everything is handpicked because we love it.”
Despite predictions that online shopping would erase small fashion retailers, customers treat Fancy That as a community space where they can feel fabrics, try things on and talk to someone who knows the store’s collections.David LeClair
Customers continue to respond to that approach. Many treat the stores as community spaces as much as retail destinations. “We have people who come in just to say hello or tell us how someone in their family is doing,” Ms. Cronk says.
Ms. Cronk had not originally planned to join Fancy That. She was a Grade 3 teacher in Ottawa when, in 1984, her mother’s longtime store manager died suddenly during the busy Christmas season.
Ms. Cronk stepped in to help. “And I never left.”
The experience awakened the same entrepreneurial instinct in Ms. Cronk that had driven her mother. Within months, Ms. Cronk left teaching and with her mother she opened another location, in downtown Kingston. At 25, she was running her own store, supported by a $50,000 bank loan.
Her mother, meanwhile, would open and close stores under various names across Southern Ontario throughout the 1980s and 1990s according to market demand. At one point, the Fancy That Group had eight to 10 stores spanning from Peterborough in the west to Brockville in the east.
After Ms. Cronk started a family, the business became a second home to her daughters, who played in the backroom as kids and later worked in sales on weekends and in the summer. The sisters, like their mother before them, hadn’t intended to join the business full-time, but they each brought useful skills. Ms. Martin holds an MBA and today manages the business’s accounting, payroll and financial systems. Ms. Worsley, a photographer, had the creative eye to become the company’s buyer.
As they became more involved, another complicated reality of family businesses emerged.
For decades the Group included a separate store, Limestone and Ivy, in Brockville, run by Ms. Cronk’s brother. But as succession planning for the third generation took shape, the arrangement became more difficult to maintain. The Kingston and Brockville locations had developed different identities and customer bases. Continuing as one structure would complicate the next transition.
Earlier this year the family separated the businesses. Ms. Cronk and her daughters maintain control of the Kingston stores – called the Roundstone and Fancy That – and her brother now owns the Brockville store.
It’s a tactic that simplifies ownership so the next generation can move forward more clearly, Mr. Simpson explains. “This avoids getting to an unwieldy cousin consortium by generation three.”
For Ms. Cronk, it meant stepping back, which her own mother once struggled to do. Ms. Cronk still chats with customers and checks out new merchandise, but operational responsibility rests mostly with her daughters.
Today, the business employs 11 people and focuses on curated, high-quality European, Canadian and U.S. clothing brands built around the idea of slow fashion. Fancy That mainly serves professional women aged 25 to 50 with stylish, work-friendly pieces at accessible price points. Roundstone targets an older customer base emphasizing comfort and higher-quality items.
Despite predictions that online shopping would erase small fashion retailers, the Kingston stores remain busy. Customers still want to touch fabrics, try things on and talk to someone who knows the collections. The family is glad to be a part of that.
“My mother always believed if you do what you love, the money will follow,” Ms. Cronk says.