Among the two current owners, Jill Rathburn and Don Croce, and the two founders, Krista Wilhelmsen and Bill Lutz, Livin’ Life Park City has energy to spare. The Main Street store is celebrating its 10th year in business, offering colorful art, playful knickknacks, mountain-style home décor and Native American jewelry. It’s a business model Wilhelmsen said works because it offers something for everyone with prices from low to high end.
“We didn’t want to be a big fancy gallery and we didn’t want to be a T-shirt shop,” Wilhelmsen said. “We decided to have something for everyone instead.”
Featuring local artists from Utah and surrounding states, the store has combined the founders’ Southwest stylewith the new owners’ mountain region tastes.
“What the store really represents is Park City,” Rathburn said. “We go out of our way to find local artists, and if not local, then regional.”
Lutz added to Rathburn’s thought.
“We worked with our artists to create what we wanted to offer to people in Park City,” Lutz said.
The four work together to run the store, a situation founders Wilhelmsen and Lutz said they love but never expected. The two opened the store the summer after the 2002 Winter Olympics, leaving a business in the Virgin Islands to come back to Park City where they originally met. Though they originally had plans to travel across Europe, once they saw the lease sign on Main Street, they knew what they wanted to do.
The store started pulling in a dedicated following of customers, including Rathburn and Croce. The couple would stop by the store on every visit to Park City, and after a number of vacations to Utah they decided to move from the East Coast to Park City permanently. When Rathburn heard that Wilhelmsen and Lutz planned on selling Livin’ Life (her favorite store in town) to retire, she made gut call to buy it from them.
Wilhelmsen and Lutz moved to St. George to soak up sun on the fairways and live up to the name they had given the store. But before long the two decided to move back to Park City and open another store. The second store never happened, but the two stayed in touch with Rathburn and Croce, who pitched the idea of hiring them to help manage the store.
“Our proposal was, ‘Do you really want to open another business and work all those crazy hours? Let’s just work it out where you can have a life and have fun in the store you started,'” Croce said. “Live life.”
Since then, the store has thrived, weathering a recession and becoming a staple on Main Street. One out-of-towner wandered in Thursday afternoon to buy another wall clock he bought one for friends the last time he was in town. Despite it being a few years since his last visit, the founders recognized their loyal customer and walked over to him to say hello.
“It’s like that show ‘Cheers,'” Rathburn joked. “Everyone does know your name.”
The four continue to live up to the name of the store, Livin’ Life. Taking full advantage of powder ski days and mid-day hikes, the four balance their schedules so that each gets the best of what Park City has to offer. As to whether or not Rathburn and Croce are the best customers Livin’ Life has ever had, Lutz was quick to answer.
“Of course,” he laughed.
Livin’ Life Park City
557 A Main Street
435-655-0111
To celebrate 10 years in business, Livin’ Life will be offering specials all year long starting with a weekend-long deal of 10 percent off from August 17 through the 19th.