"My shop is basically for people who like to have fun dressing,” says Julianne Cleaver ’01, standing amid racks of trendy gauze shirts and sequined ball gowns in her West Reading fashion boutique, Bella Jules. A bell jingles at the door, a customer enters, and the store greeter, Cleaver’s Yorkshire terrier/poodle Kailie, pops her head up over the counter. The customer explains that she is going to a black tie affair. “I have dressy earrings,” she says as she pats Kailie’s tiny head, “But I wonder if you have something kind of different—something funky.”

A pair of rhinestone hoop earrings in a display on the wall catch her eye. “These are cool and fun,” she says.

From behind the counter, Cleaver produces another pair for consideration while the customer describes the dress she’ll
be wearing.

“I really like those,” Cleaver says of the hoops, as the woman holds up both pair at the curvy art deco mirror on the wall. If the customer gets the sense that Cleaver is envisioning the dress with the earrings, she is probably right. Julianne Cleaver is definitely a woman of vision.

Bella Jules is the result of that vision, a dream Cleaver has had for as long as she can remember. “I’ve always wanted to open my own store,” she says. But Cleaver knew that she had to get there in stages, and she knew exactly what those stages would be.

The first step was to get some work experience, so in her final semester as a visual/apparel merchandising major at Albright, she took two internships with fashion and fabric designers in New York. For anyone else, those internships might never have happened. But when Cleaver’s search for an affordable apartment in the city came up empty, she refused to give up. “I lived in a living room,” she says. “A friend found it in the classifieds.” For $900 a month, a woman in
New York allowed Cleaver to make her living room into a bedroom for one semester.

After graduation, Cleaver’s experience at the New York firms helped her to land a job as a buyer for Boscov’s. Although she started in petite clothing, she spent most of her four years at Boscov’s buying merchandise for the gift and toy departments, including fittingly, dress up sets for little girls. “Boscov’s was a great learning experience,” she says, “I learned how to interact with vendors, what discounts I could ask for.” But even more important, Cleaver says that her experience at Boscov’s helped to develop her confidence. “Working at Boscov’s, I thought—I could do this for myself.”

By the time she was ready to take that step, Cleaver had already done her homework – literally. In a small business marketing class during her junior year at Albright, she had been assigned to write a business plan. While this might have been an academic exercise for other students, for Cleaver it was the foundation of her goal. “I really wanted to do it,” she says of writing the plan. It was this business plan, with minor adjustments, that went on to secure the funding for Cleaver to open Bella Jules in March 2005.

Every inch of the boutique at 700 Penn Avenue is Cleaver’s own design, the pink walls accented with mauve circles and stripes, which she painted herself. From the front room, with its mix of shirts, jeans, and a jewelry display in the corner, an archway leads into a middle room, where floor-to-ceiling shelves hold a display of colorful bags. A right turn sends shoppers through a hallway, lined with a display of sweaters, into the back room. Cleaver says she knew she didn’t want to be in a mall but had in mind something more upscale and “boutique-y.”

She knows what she wants in the clothes she carries as well. “I don’t do conservative clothing,” she says of the style in her shop. While she carries a range of clothing for teens through seniors, she checks fashion magazines regularly to make sure she’s on trend. When asked how she knows what to buy for the store, she asserts, “It’s just my eye. I’m 27, so I can identify with the younger crowd.” In buying for older shoppers, Cleaver asks herself, “Could I see my mom in this?”

Last fall, Cleaver took on more than a new fashion season. She began a new academic year as well. In addition to speaking at Reading Area Community College and local high schools, she’s back at Albright, teaching the senior seminar for visual/apparel merchandising majors. “I was never one for public speaking,” Cleaver says. But nonetheless, she describes the experience as rewarding. A few of her students have visited the boutique on their own, and Cleaver says she may hold a class there in the future to help the students benefit from her real-life experience.

“Opening your own business is a big risk,” Cleaver says. “It’s more than just buying pretty things.” Julianne Cleaver knows that, to succeed in business, you need a solid plan. She credits Albright with giving her that.