by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
She told her mother that the family business wasn’t in her future.
“I went to school and got my master’s to be a teacher and that is what I wanted to do,” said Cynthia Segraves, owner of the Pier 17 Marine shop in Ortega. “I didn’t see working at the shop in my future.”
A change of heart many years ago has Segraves behind the counter at Pier 17 today as it celebrates its 48th anniversary this month. Though she is the top executive of the company, Segraves still claims to be the vice president.
“There will only be one first lady of Pier 17,” said Segraves. “My mother, Grace.”
Grace Bell Segraves Rogers died in 2009, but her legacy lives on in both Pier 17 and her daughter, who decided to change her career path one fateful summer.
“My parents asked me to watch the business while they went on vacation in Europe in the summer of 1974,” said Segraves, who was on summer break from teaching.
“When she got back she was so mad at me because I hadn’t sold a boat. While they were gone I had been sending loan applications to the bank for people to buy boats, but the banks didn’t have any money to loan, so we didn’t sell any boats. She thought the slowdown in sales was because she had left me in charge,” she said.
Segraves joined the business when the family still owned the marina and sold power boats. When she found out that one boat could cost more than a teacher’s salary, she decided to continue with the family business and resigned from teaching.
Today, Pier 17 is tucked behind Chamblin Bookmine on Roosevelt Boulevard and is still known as “the South’s largest nautical store,” but it stocks a smaller fleet that includes small sailboats, dinghies, canoes and kayaks.
“When I started, my mother had developed an inventory that was worth about a million dollars,” said Segraves. “We have everything someone would need to restore a boat. She was very smart when she bought things, getting the right price for necessary items.”
Though the store has undergone some downsizing over the past couple of years, the aisles of nautical charts and maps, hardware, clothing, furnishings and boats could take up the better part of a day to explore.
Segraves remembered managing the store when her mother was in the hospital. She wanted to show the customers that she was knowledgeable about the inventory, so she brought a lot of the boat parts and items that were asked for regularly to the front of the store.
“I didn’t want to bring the clothing and shoes to the front of the store and have people think I wasn’t knowledgeable about the business,” said Segraves.
When her mother left the hospital and returned to the store, she let Segraves know about proper product placement.
“She told me that you don’t put the stuff people need in the front of the store. You make them walk through the stuff they don’t know they need first,” said Segraves.
Segraves paused and stared off after the comment.
“Having worked with her, I learned a lot,” she said. “She had a lot of experience and knowledge that I didn’t know she had.”
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