AS SEEN IN

Business Leader Credits Fortune

By STEPHANIE MURPHY
Daily News Business and Real Estate Writer
Sunday, April 22, 2007

Mary Coakley Gushée, president of Mildred Hoit, will receive the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce's Business Leader of the Year award next month. Gushée, who has worked at the shop on Sunrise Avenue since 1972, said she was relieved to learn she won't have to give a speech at the ceremony.

Little Mary Coakley loved summers on Cape Cod, and her affinity for shopping surfaced there by the time she was 5, although not in the path one might expect of a future fashion retailer.

This year's Business Leader of the Year, Mary Coakley Gushée was drawn to the toy cars she found among the aisles of a dime store in Buzzards Bay, near her family's summer home in Osterville, Mass.

"I loved playing with little toy cars," she said. "I raced them at home, running around the Oriental rugs."

Gushée, president of Mildred Hoit Inc., is set to receive the award from the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce May 10.

Recalling her first shopping experiences — and "the aroma of roasted peanuts" in that dime store — Gushée said she later graduated to dolls and grew to delight in "pretty things."

She set about making the pursuit of them her livelihood. "This is what I love ... toys for girls."

From her conventional Irish-Catholic upbringing in Newton, Mass., she attended Rosarian Academy in West Palm Beach.

After completing her studies at the Jeanne D'Arc Academy in Milton, Mass., she graduated from Marymount College in Tarrytown, N.Y., with a bachelor's degree in English.

"My one and only career decision was made by serendipitous good fortune," she said of her first job, with Sara Fredericks.

"It led me down a garden path I came to love. I worked under Miss Fredericks' mighty hand in Palm Beach and Boston for two years and never left retailing."

For the next two years, she learned the jewelry business.

"I cut my teeth in the jewelry business at Cartier," she said. "I worked in Palm Beach under the tutelage of Henri Duru. In New York, I worked in the old 'boutique' on Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street."

After a two-year segue at Shaxted Linens in Chicago, where she learned about home furnishings from Stanley Ginsberg, Coakley returned to Palm Beach and joined the staff of Mildred Hoit and has worked at the specialty boutique at 265 Sunrise Ave. since 1972.

Fred Hoit, former president of Fieldcrest, and his wife had opened Pot Pourri, a linen shop in Hyannis, in 1958. They added a Palm Beach store, called Mildred Hoit, and at one time had four shops in South Florida.

Coakley worked with Mildred Hoit in what was still a bed-and-bath business until Hoit's death in 1979. She acquired controlling interest in the corporation in 1985 from Fred Hoit, who continued at the shop until his death in 1994.

Sunny Koontz joined the staff in the mid-1970s and remains the company's only other stockholder.

"Buying and selling is my favorite part of the job. But I really didn't expect to get an award for it," said the retailer, who became Mary Gushée 11 years ago.

Her husband, Steve Gushée, a retired Episcopal priest and former dean of the cathedral in Hartford, Conn., handles the bookkeepingfor the business.

When chamber President John Maus asked Gushée to accept the business leader award, she had only one qualm.

"I was shocked and very happy," she said. "Then I asked him, 'do I have to give a speech?' I was glad when he said no."

The current Mildred Hoit organization is "the offspring of a great deal of history, including the labor of a corps of fine career merchants, salespeople and service specialists well known to the community," Gushée said.

She credited merchandising manager Fran Butler, "who loves sportswear and was responsible for bringing in sportswear."

Koontz added gifts to the mix.

Lingerie was the store's first expansion outside bed-and-bath goods, and Gushée started the jewelry division on a whim with a friend from school.

The girl's father, who owned a jewelry firm, left his sample case for two weeks.

"We sold a lot of it," she recalled.

Today, the store carries luxury sportswear, fine jewelry, handbags and hats, specialty lingerie and gifts.

One legacy that remains intact is the Mildred Hoit signature gift-wrap, widely known on and off the island.

"That service was originally instituted by Mrs. Hoit and is symbolic of my conviction that good service lies at the heart of a good business," Gushée said.

The store also pre-wraps various gifts for the convenience of busy shoppers.

Laurel Baker, executive director of the chamber, said the shop and its owner match the locale.

"The store and Mary epitomize the essence of the Palm Beach lifestyle, the ageless qualities that established Palm Beach as a premier resort community," Baker said.

Mildred Hoit is a "rather serendipitous experience of linens, clothes and jewelry," Baker added. "It's a safe haven to go into. If you don't have your wallet, she can sell you one."

Gushée said her success comes from outside the store.

"My customers make me look good," she said. "They tell me what they want, what to look for, and if I'm missing something. I do listen. So far, so good."

Baker lauded the store owner's "wonderful eye" and her success at maintaining "that classic Palm Beach look."

Gushée represents "the business ethic and image of Palm Beach," Baker said, by contributing "very quietly but very definitely to the nonprofits in the community."

Maus made a similar observation when he called her about the award, Gushée said.

"John said we had contributed to the community in special and generous ways," she said. "I was surprised."

She and her husband will make their third buying trip to China in June. The first one, a Christmas present three years ago from her stepson and his wife, was a true eye-opener.

"We fell in love with it," she said.

When she isn't running Mildred Hoit, Gushée enjoys "the great gift of five grandchildren ... and shopping."