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May 12, 2025
WAUPACA – When Brooke Bebout opened The Revival in downtown Waupaca in May 2012, she said she wasn’t just following a trend – she was starting one, long before small-town boutiques featuring trendy but affordable apparel became the norm.
That being said, Bebout wasn’t new to the fashion world.
As a creative, she said she had been making and selling jewelry for almost six years before being inspired by some handmade shops she encountered during a trip to Washington, D.C.
“I was inspired by those shops and thought, ‘That would be cool to do someday,’” she said.
When she returned to Waupaca, Bebout said she noticed a space she’d been eyeing was available for rent.
A fan of architecture and old buildings, she said, “all I could think was, ‘Someone should revive that.’”
Designs on a store
Bebout said she toured the space, and though it required quite a bit of renovation, the landlord was willing to work with her and offered reasonable rent.
And so, she said, The Revival began to take shape.
Initially, Bebout said she featured her wares in the front of the two-section store at 111 W. Fulton St. – bringing her vision of handmade items and art into the space.
She said the store’s initial stock came from visits to the market in Chicago, starting small with the inventory, partly because that was all she was able to afford at the time.
As business grew and money came in, Bebout said she invested in more inventory.
“I hustled along and reinvested what I could, not taking any money out of the business for the first few years,” she said.
Bebout said she leaned into the items customers favored – and so the shop evolved.
Those items, she said, included chic offerings at a moderate price point, with selections influenced by her travels.
From age 19, Bebout said she left her hometown of New London and hitchhiked around the country.
She said she landed in the Fox Valley and then Madison for a few years before returning to Central Wisconsin.
Bebout said her goal with The Revival is to offer trendy-but-wearable items that she’d want to purchase for herself.
“I like to be trendy, but I also like to be comfortable – things that are soft and stretchy,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to choose one over the other.”
Today, Bebout said The Revival is known for offering comfortable, trendy and moderately-priced clothing for all ages, from teenagers to women in their 70s and 80s.
The store’s core customers, she said, fall within the 25- to 35-year-old range – but said she loves that her wares attract all ages.
“I like to say that it doesn’t matter how old you are – you can be stylish and comfortable,” she said.
Bringing affordable fashion to downtown Neenah
In 2018, Bebout said she expanded The Revival experience to the Fox Valley, establishing a storefront at 123 W. Wisconsin Ave. in Neenah.
She said it’s been a great addition to The Revival brand.
Because that boutique is a bit larger than the Waupaca location, Bebout said it features not only clothing and accessories but also more art.
Having a second location, and the growth associated with that, she said, created a new, full-time opportunity for The Revival in 2022 – the role of creative director that former long-time sales associate and social media manager, Emily Simon, assumed.
Bebout said it was a natural next step for the evolution of both The Revival and Simon’s career.
“Emily started working for me in high school and worked for me for a few years before she left and did her own thing, like she should,” she said. “She lived in the Fox Valley, and we kept in touch, with her filling in at the Neenah shop in a pinch.”
When one of the Neenah team members left, Bebout said she reassessed the situation, especially upon learning Simon was looking for her next opportunity.
“I wasn’t planning to hire someone full-time at that point, but hired her for social media and the website, and it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” she said.
Collaborations for the win
Bebout said she credits Simon’s creativity, perfectionism and energy with the success of The Revival’s social media presence, website updates and more that fall under her oversight.
And sometimes, she said, there is a collision between artistry by the store and its makers or community members.
One such case, Bebout said, has been the collaboration between The Revival and Mikey Koziczkowski – otherwise known as Mikey, the part-time artist, who owns Wait What Prints in Waupaca.
Bebout said she, Koziczkowski and Simon stood together at the Neenah shop one day and decided to apply one of Emily’s photos of an olive and mouth into a custom screen-printed T-shirt produced by Koziczkowski for sale exclusively at The Revival.
“It’s a great way to promote Emily as a photographer, Mikey’s capabilities at his shop and provide something that sets us apart by having something no one else has,” Bebout said. “People are buying the shirt, are excited about it and want to keep going – offering something new every season that’s different and that people can connect with.”
She said she created another store-exclusive collaboration with Wanderlust Scents, creating a custom scented candle that captures the store’s aroma.
Bebout said Andy Colden came into the store, tapped his olfactory system, noticed notes of different scents and crafted a custom candle representing The Revival.
“He took 16 different scents to make our candle, and it smells just like our shop,” she said. “It’s a great quality candle, too.”
Bebout said collaborations like these help The Revival stand out among the increasing number of boutiques that offer clothing and apparel at a moderate price point.
“One of the ways we can set ourselves apart is to have things no one else has,” she said. “I thrive on that kind of thing anyway. I thrive on collaborations with other people and artists.”
Bebout said increasingly, customers want items that have a story behind them, whether it’s The Revival candle, the custom T-shirt or her jewelry.
“When I see someone admiring the jewelry or making a comment, I tell them I made this, and this is this kind of stone and this kind of gold and share the story behind it,” she said. “People are inundated with junk to buy, but don’t have to settle for that when they can have something that has a story and is meaningful and special that they can love and have for a long time.”
Style for the community
Showcasing some custom items and collaborating with other businesses, Bebout said, sparked her interest and involvement in The Waupaca Style Show held earlier this month, alongside Christine’s Boutique, Panache and Northern Home.
Bebout said Waupaca used to host annual fashion shows pre-COVID-19, and it was time to reintroduce the tradition, albeit as a brunch event.
Similarly, she said she participates in downtown Neenah’s annual Ultimate Ladies’ Day, a day-long event featuring brunch, shopping, a fashion show and more – enjoying the social aspect of the event as well as the opportunity to collaborate with other businesses.
“The ladies love it, and it’s a high-energy day all around,” she said. “It’s a win-win kind of day and one of our top sales days of the year. I want to work with people, and if there is a way to support each other, the more, the merrier. We all do better when we all do better.”
A forum for artistry
Though The Revival has long featured her custom jewelry, Bebout said the boutique also features her custom-sewn pieces – a nod to the beginning of her journey when she considered being a clothing designer or personal shopper.
“Before I opened my shops, one of the many things I thought of doing was to be a clothing designer,” she said. “I made a lot of my own clothing at that point, and I had done a photo shoot with a friend who owned a salon and made the clothes for it.”
As somewhat of an extension to those early interests, Bebout said with her current business model, she can offer items in a variety of sizes and offer her personal styling services anytime a customer enters her store.
Most of the time, she said customers can find her in the Waupaca store, though she does bounce back and forth between it and Neenah as needed – especially as she receives all her orders at the Neenah store, which she remodeled a few years ago to expand into the second section that was formerly closed off to customers.
A unique business sense
Bebout said she continues to purchase inventory the way she has since she started the business – in small amounts that allow her to gauge what the forthcoming season will bring. That, she said, includes seeing what trends hold, as well as what customers gravitate toward buying.
“I used to think I was doing it wrong because I don’t do it like other people by buying a whole season at once,” she said. “But that method of buying didn’t work for me. I prefer to follow my intuition in what I buy, maybe buying a month or two out.”
Bebout said she pays close attention to what’s happening on social media but also trusts her instincts when it comes to how and what she purchases.
“I’ve always been an unorthodox buyer, and I’m finally embracing how that works since COVID, when it worked in my favor at that time,” she said.
And, Bebout said, it continues to work for her.
Similarly, she said staying connected to the boutiques’ respective communities works well for the stores’ livelihoods as well.
“We don’t see it as us and a bunch of shoppers,” she said. “The Revival and the people who shop there are a community. After doing this for so many years, we’ve been through stages of life with some women – from high school, to college, to getting married, to having babies. Thirteen years is a pretty big chunk of somebody’s life, and we build relationships with people over the years.”
