Courtesy / Jo Miller
Jo Miller.
Updated: January 9, 2023
Former textile manufacturer retires from retirement, plans Yarmouth retail enterprise
Courtesy / F.O. Bailey Real Estate
Tenants at the Yarmouth Gateway Complex include OTTO Pizza, Cakes Extraordinaire, financial consulting firm Edward Jones, and Royal River Community Players. The new owner plans to open a bead shop and a coffee shop.
Cuppa Jo’s could open in Yarmouth by Feb. 1.
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The founder and owner of a textile mill in Brunswick closed the operation and retired with the onset of pandemic.
But Jo Miller wasn’t one to sit around.
“After being home for a year and half, I said, ‘I’ve got to do something,’” said Miller.
Miller, who founded and operated Maine Woolens in Brunswick for 15 years before closing in 2020, bought the Yarmouth Gateway Complex at 305 U.S. Route 1 from Mike Pride for an undisclosed amount.
Thomas Gadbois and David Jones of F.O. Bailey Real Estate brokered the off-market deal.
The 8,929-square-foot retail building is in excellent condition, said Gadbois, who represented the seller.
The seller
Pride is a former merchant mariner turned investor and self-storage business entrepreneur who lives in Falmouth. A large project of his in recent years was the construction of an 80,000-square-foot self-storage development in the Innovation District at The Downs in Scarborough.
Jones and Gadbois have facilitated many of Pride’s transactions, including the 2021 purchase by Pride and his wife Silvana of a mini-golf course in Naples.
The buyer
Jones and Gadbois had also worked with Miller before and knew she was looking for commercial property.
“She knew the building, and said, ‘I want that,’” said Jones, who represented Miller in the deal.
Tenants at the complex include OTTO Pizza, Cakes Extraordinaire, financial consulting firm Edward Jones, and Royal River Community Players.
The Route 1 location is half a mile south of Main Street.
Miller said her textile mill, Maine Woolens, produced about 50,000 cotton and wool blankets and throws per year. The mill employed weavers, sewers and finishers. In 2012, the mill expanded from 9,000 square feet to 15,000 square feet.
Blankets were distributed to outlets such as L.L. Bean, Garnet Hill, Orvis, and William Sonoma, to name a few of her clients, she said.
But with the pandemic, Miller lost employees and she was of an age to retire.
“So we shut it down” and sold the equipment and the mill building, she said.
“We had hoped to keep the mill running, but we couldn’t get anyone to buy,” she added.
But being at home didn’t suit Miller.
“I always loved retail,” she said.
Beads and coffee
A couple of ideas percolated.
Miller enjoys making glass-bead necklaces.
“You melt the glass rod down onto a mandrel and, as you’re melting, you decide on a shape you would like to have — disc, round, square, conical,” she said.
The process continues by adding dots of different colors strategically around the bead and then manipulating the molten glass.
“When you are satisfied with the decorations, you then put it in a kiln to anneal them so they won’t break when cooled,” she continued. “Then comes the fun process of stringing the necklaces. And the arduous task of finding a buyer.”
Courtesy / Jo Miller
Wildfire Beads necklace.
For several years early on, she exhibited in a gallery in San Francisco and discovered that many people liked the beadwork.
So she looked around for possible retail spaces and became aware that Pride was interested in selling the Yarmouth complex.
“So I said, ‘Maybe I can do something with him,’” she recalled.
Miller financed the purchase with cash generated by the sale of another property she owned in Falmouth, called Ashland Farm.
The complex had tenants to provide a revenue stream. But it also had two vacant spaces. One of the spaces seemed great for setting up a bead shop out front with a small coffee shop out back.
“My main thing is to have fun and give people the best cup of coffee ever,” said Miller.
Miller took a barista course, bought a roasting machine, added plumbing, rewired both spaces and separated them.
She also cleaned up the basement so it could be used for storage.
The additional investment has been close to $100,000.
Miller plans to open Wildfire Beads sometime this month.
Cuppa Jo’s could open by Feb. 1, she said.
“We’re trying to be very creative with the kind of coffee we can make,” she said. “We buy green beans and roast them and taste them and see if we can do something really extravagant that we like.”
Miller plans to lease out another vacant space of about 1,000 square feet that’s on the second story.
She added, “I get ideas and I can get them all going.”
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