Sister Style

During the Great Recession, which occurred from late 2007 into 2009, most people were concerned about their investments, their mortgages, and whether they could trust their banks with their money. What most people were not doing was opening a new business. However, most people don’t have the faith, family values, and work ethic of sisters Emily Vaux Burden and Anna Pepper Vaux Hewett, owners and partners of Gigi’s Boutique in Old Town Bluffton.

Both are natives of Bluffton, and both graduated from Hilton Head Island High School and from College of Charleston, where Emily studied business economics and Anna Pepper studied communications.

In 2007, Emily was married, working in the mortgage industry, and living in Colorado, while Anna Pepper had just graduated from college and was back in Bluffton. The sisters felt there was a need in their once small town, so they decided to open a boutique that would cater to women in the Lowcountry.

In 2007, within a few months after Anna Pepper graduated, the sisters took their business plan to the bank, secured a loan, signed a lease, went to market, and bought all the inventory they would need to open the store. Then the recession hit hard.

“Even though it was literally the worst time ever to open a women’s boutique, we had to go through with it at that point,” Anna Pepper said. “We had already signed