The VIETRI Home Office is a rather handsome big warehouse with offices in front and a long, wide lawn that gently slopes downward to Elizabeth Brady Road. As I admire the expanse of green with morning sun sparkling upon it, I remember the early VIETRI Warehouse Sale days, when on a Friday early evening before the Saturday Sale the lawn would be filled with small groups of avid Sale shoppers sitting around their tents sharing glasses of wine or other drinks as they prepared to sleep out. They wanted to be first in line for the Saturday morning Sale. Sorority sisters, groups of family members, good friends from work, college or home towns would gather in reunions to chat and dine on take-out food from Hillsborough but more often from picnics brought in huge coolers in the back of SUV and station wagons. A dozen to twenty groups might be assembled for the pre-Warehouse Sale camping adventure, folding chairs, blankets and sometimes even a gas fire warming excited shoppers on a cool October evening in Hillsborough, North Carolina.
Somehow the early arrivals kept a list of each person in the order they arrived at VIETRI’s lawn and this became the order in which these first-comers would be in line for the Saturday morning Sale. We heard there was a lady from nearby Durham who would arrive early Friday afternoon to be the organizer of “The List,” but no one at VIETRI ever met her, so we assume this was just a rumor.
Concerned for our Sale campers, VIETRI would hire an off-duty policeman to guard over them for the night. Around 8 p.m. VIETRI CEO, Susan Gravely, and her husband Bill would arrive with Italian red wine and plastic cups to share with each of the camping groups. They’d walk from group to group to welcome camper shoppers and thank them for caring so much to be there early, and they’d share tales of their love for VIETRI. What a sense of togetherness!
The happy anticipation of the campers only ignited excitement for all VIETRI’s employees as we looked forward to rising early the next morning to be at VIETRI by 7 a.m. for last-minute preparations before the sale started at 8 a.m. sharp. Just as 8 arrived, all the VIETRI staff would form two lines at the entrance of the sale and we’d applaud and cheer as the shoppers would walk into our fenced-in selling area outside the warehouse. We wanted to especially thank those early campers who’d braved a cool evening on the VIETRI lawn to be the first to get those one-of-a-kind samples and other VIETRI treasures sprinkled among the many tables piled with VIETRI products.
I miss those early campers. Those were really fun times for all. Our staff still gather to applaud those first shoppers who enter our enormous Warehouse and Outlet area packed fully for our annual Fall Warehouse Sale. Don’t miss it, especially if you’ve never experienced it. October 1 -3 from 8 to 2 at 343 Elizabeth Brady Road just south of downtown Hillsborough.
CLICK HERE for more details and directions. We are looking forward to seeing you!
-Frances Gravely, VIETRI Founder
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