Golden anniversary: Stitchin’ Post celebrates 50 years of business
Published 12:10 am Saturday, April 26, 2025
Pam Coffield greets friends as they come to the special 50th year celebration at her shop. – Karen Kistler
A large crowd dropped by the Stitchin’ Post during the April 24 anniversary party. — Karen Kistler
Hodge Coffield chats with visitors during the anniversary event. – Karen Kistler
Stitchin’ Post owner Pam Coffield, second from left, and co-workers, Emily Chandler, far left, Kelly Safrit and Sherry Lowery, pose with the 50th balloon and sign noting the shop’s 50th celebration. Others unavailable for the photo are Gina Pinyan, Brooke Rainey and Raney Roberson. – Karen Kistler
Stitchin’ Post owner Pam Coffield, far right, and co-workers, from left, Kelly Safrit, Emily Chandler and Sherry Lowery take a minute to pose for a photo inside the shop. Others unavailable for the photo are Gina Pinyan, Brooke Rainey and Raney Roberson. – Karen Kistler
A line formed downt the sidewalk waiing to sign the guest book and enter the building. — Karen Kistler
Attendees looked around the shop and enjoyed refrehments. — Karen Kistler
Karen Kistler
karen.kistler@salisburypost.com
SALISBURY — Stitchin’ Post Gifts, which has been a constant on South Main Street, Salisbury, celebrated 50 years of business with a special anniversary party on the evening of April 24 at the shop, located at 104 S. Main St.
The line to sign the guest book stretched down the sidewalk and the shop filled up as many friends dropped by to wish them congratulations for their 50 years in business.
Owned and operated by Pam Coffield, the business has been a family venture since it first opened in October 1975.
She greeted people as they came into the building and said, “it’s very touching that everybody wants to celebrate with us our 50 years almost. We’re very proud to be at this milestone anniversary, in the same building. I’m seeing so many of our customers tonight that have been with us for all 50 years.”
Coffield said that she wanted to tell how much she “appreciated people understanding what it means to shop local because it keeps people like me in business on Main Street.”
Attendees spent time visiting with others, looking around the shop, enjoying refreshments and signed up for a raffle.
Longtime customers Linda and Jim Arnold came by to help celebrate, and Linda commented that “50 years is a long time,” and Jim said they had been coming since 1988.
John Paul, who was at the event, said that he had known Pam since 1989.
Another customer, Marie Vanhoy, said that she is “50 years old myself this year. I come in as often as I get the chance and I really enjoy all of the unique things that can be found here.”
This shop, she said with a grin, was not her first business endeavor, telling when she was approximately nine she weaved pot holders and sold them door to door in the neighborhood.
At 14, Coffield was in high school and participated in the school’s distributive education program where she could leave school and go to work. She and her mom, Margaret Hylton, who died in 1997, were working together at a fabric shop, National Fabrics.
Following high school, Coffield went to college in Florida but decided to return home and returned to National Fabrics during the summer with her mom. It was at this time the company shut down, and they took this opportunity to look for work elsewhere, she said.
Coffield said that her dad, Wallas Hylton, who died at the age of 104 in 2023, was a very smart businessman, having moved to Salisbury with his family in 1960 to manage the Carolina Tire Company Store. She said he had been in the retail business his whole life and credits him for her entrepreneurial spirit.
She said “he was a tremendous influence in my life and my siblings’ lives. So we just had that burning desire inside of us to work, work hard and try to make the planet a better place.”
After the fabric shop closed, the family got together and brainstormed what to do, and they came up with the idea of having their own store and tried to determine what kind and the location.
When trying to select the place, at the time there was no mall and the only shopping areas were downtown, noting it was a viable downtown.
They looked at places at Town Mall and the current downtown space.
Coffield said she likes the architectural details of historic places and she noticed the railing of the stairs in the shop and she loved that.
They purchased the building in the early ’80s, and through the years have done lots of remodeling, first opening up several places in a wall and eventually taking it down, giving them more room. Original brick walls and floors can be seen in the store as Coffield said, “everybody loves the old creaky floors.”
As for the type of store they would open, Coffield said she wanted a dress shop, but one had just opened nearby. Thinking they should do something different, they opted to go into needlework, something, she said, “had always been in my family. We always did needlework” and had grown up learning how to do these things. She was 10 when her mother taught her how to sew, knit and crochet.
So the decision to go into a combined needlework and consignment store was made; however, the consignment part didn’t last long, she said, and decided to concentrate on needlework.
Coming up with a name was a family decision as Coffield said she, her parents, and brother were sitting around the kitchen table and trying to think of a name.
She credited her brother as the one who actually came up with the name that has been with them these 50 years.
“You think of hitchin’ post in the olden days, so it was kind of a play on that so we just said stitchin’ post. It seemed kind of neat,” she said.
And while they have changed over the years as for what they sell, the name hasn’t changed, noting that they have hung on to their needlework, and in particular the crosstitch, which they had until about the late ’90s and actually still have a little bit in the store.
It was right after 1975 that the counting crosstitch explosion happened, coming to the States from Denmark said Coffield and they taught classes on how to do it along with macrame and latch hook rugs.
“I mean we did it all,” she said. “Anything that was hot and just on fire at the time, we just embraced it and taught classes, taught people how to do it.”
After the business was up and running, Coffield returned to school to get her college degree.
“I really don’t know why it was important for me to get a college degree,” she said. “I guess at the time we were thinking the business is still brand new and you don’t know if it’s going to work or not, how long it’s going to last and you wanted a college education to fall back on if you needed it.”
She ended up at Catawba College where she earned her business degree, and it’s also where she met her husband, Hodge Coffield, who, she said, “had a wonderful career right here in Salisbury as a police officer.”
He served at the Salisbury Police Department for 20 years and five years as chief of police in China Grove.
Coffield said he is very supportive of her in the business as is all her family. Hodge was at the event and shared about their meeting in 1980 and both attending Catawba.
“I’m just so proud of her,” he said.
He said that she is still going strong, though she did stop doing the Christmas shows which he said were lots of hard work.
He said her parents were big influences and instilled the retail side, and her dad really instilled how to work with customers.
I’m just in awe of her, Hodge said. “Pam will do anything for a customer. She will make them happy. That’s what’s kept this place going.”
She also told of how her parents were always involved in the store, noting that she and her mother worked together for 30-35 years until she was unable to do so.
Additional family members who she said have been very important in the business included her brother and sister-in-law, Billy and Nancy Hylton. Coffield said her sister-in-law worked there for 16 years and her brother had his framing studio upstairs.
“So it’s really been a family affair,” she said.
The only member of the family still working at the shop, Coffield said, with a grin, that the six co-workers who are there are her family. These include Kelly Safrit, Sherry Lowery, Emily Chandler, Gina Pinyan, Brooke Rainey and Raney Roberson.
Others who have worked at the shop for many years have included Betty Jo Hardy who worked for 16 years, and Joann McDaniel, who was there for 13 years.
When asked what she attributes the longevity of the shop to, Coffield mentioned several things, the first being hiring the right people.
“We have had such wonderful, wonderful workers here, co-workers, we work right along beside them, everyday. It’s just been, surrounding yourself with the right people who have a love for people and have servants’ hearts.”
Treating others how you expect to be treated and offering over the top customer service are other reasons, she said.
She credited her mother for showing the best customer service there is.
“My mom was such a good retail person,” Coffield said. “She had such a good personality and was so gracious with people.”
That customer service has continued as she said of Lowery, who, in a couple years, will have been at the shop for 30 years. Lowery said she didn’t want to leave because “I love my customers. I don’t want to leave them,” as they talk and support one another.
Coffield said Lowery goes above and beyond in customer service telling she went to the home of one customer who was unable to get out and took bags of merchandise to her home to look at and also delivered something to Charlotte for another customer.
“We go way overboard,” said Coffield. “Even the simplest customer service stands out in today’s world,” to which Lowery noted the handwritten thank you cards that Coffield sends.
They also offer a loyalty program where credit can be earned, and they celebrate the customer’s birth month giving a percentage off one time during that month.
Coffield also attributes changing their merchandise with the times and selling what’s hot to their longevity, which is what they have done and continue to do.
It started with the crosstitch in the ’70s, and then in the ’80s, she said, women returned to work and didn’t have time for that and so they followed what was popular.
“We listened to our customers and we knew that the country gifts were really popular at that time, little country chairs and little cabinets and figurines, cows, pigs, just primitive kinds of merchandise.” Taking baby steps, they morphed from crosstitch to the new hot items.
In the ’90s, it was collectibles such as Boyds Bears, Beanie Babies and Tom Clark Gnomes that were hot-ticket items, offering those. This lasted approximately 10 years, and it was on to the next hot items, she said.
During the 2000s, they carried some clothes, which is where they are today, a combination of fashions and accessories.
One huge item during this time were the TOMS shoes, which she said they started carrying in 2009.
“We listen to our customers. We listen to their requests,” she said, telling that these shoes started in California and they got a tip about them.
Another special thing about the TOMS shoes is that when a customer bought a pair, the company gave a pair to a child in need, “and that was amazing,” she said.
Through this campaign and their selling thousands of these shoes, thousands were given away.
And, as with everything, she said, this also ended and the next hot item for them were Alex and Ani bracelets, which were very popular, and then the Hey Dude shoes came along.
She said, “I’m looking for the next hot thing, keeping our ears and eyes open.”
A final thing that Coffield stated as being important to the business being around these 50 years is “being open when you say that you’re going to be open.”
Their hours have been Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. since day one. And while some may close up because it might be a slow day, she said, no, because as soon as you do that, “that’s when all the people are going to come. Your hours say you are open till 5:30 and they come at four o’clock and you’re not here, then you’ve lost that sale and you’ve lost a potential lifelong customer.”
To those customers who have supported her through these 50 years, Coffield said, “they are the ones who have made this business survive. They are the ones that get what it means when you say shop local. They are really the ones that we serve and I’m so grateful and thankful for everybody that walks through that door everyday.”
During COVID, Coffield said, “you spend your whole life trying to get people to come in the front door and then in one day, you’re telling people to stay away,” so they were scrambling to keep going and do what they could.
She had been able to get hundreds of bottles of hand sanitizer, which they sold. They also learned about Facebook Live and started getting the word out through social media. People would order, they would pack it and mail it or people would come by and they would hand the orders out the door.
Most of her staff stayed home as she said she couldn’t promise them anything and didn’t want them to miss the opportunity of the unemployment that was offered, but she was able to use a couple of her co-workers.
“We made lemonade out of lemons,” said Coffield.
Today, they still do some Facebook Lives once or twice a week highlighting new items they have in the store, she said.
When considering opening a business and running it, Coffield shared several pieces of advice she learned herself and passed along.
One of those is when selecting a place, the three most important to consider are location, location, location.
Little did she know when they first chose this spot, she said, but it has become the hub of downtown Salisbury and “so this is kind of where it’s all happening.”
She also told how her first sales rep, Sam Patton, told her something she hasn’t forgotten, and that is “don’t expect to make any money for the first three years. So for the first three years you’re putting everything back in the business. You’re not taking home a paycheck.”
You will not get rich quickly going into business, Coffield said. “It’s an incredible amount of work and dedication and you take your work home with you” as she added how much her family has been a support to her and she also expressed that she is “grateful for the community embracing local shopping.”
During the event, the shop gave back to the community, as it was noted that items purchased benefited Meals on Wheels Rowan,
