A boutique offering custom gifts recently relocated to Dresden. Always Louise, Laser Engraved Gifts and More specializes in one-of-a-kind women’s and men’s gift items for all occasions.
Always Louise, formerly located in the Downtown Freight Shops in Zanesville, found the perfect retail location at 701 Main Street in Dresden. The building also houses another boutique on the first floor, as well as a gym and other businesses on the second floor.
“Traffic started slowing, and I was looking for a new location and stumbled across this location and fell in love with the building and the small town charm of everything,” explained owner Danielle Buck. “I know that they had been talking about kind of revitalizing it [Dresden]. … I was excited to kind of be part of that growth. And I thought I would be a good fit. I know there weren’t really a lot of things like this, really, anywhere to do the personalized things on site. So I was excited to bring that to the town.”
The shop space is about 1,000 square feet and includes two rooms filled with a variety of customized items, including tumblers, jewelry, wall decor, cutting boards, ornaments, hats, and keychains, to name a few, as well as crocheted items, t-shirts, sweatshirts, essential oils, wax melts and warmers, and antique and vintage merchandise. Currently, two vendors, JTR Custom Metalwork and Rogers Honey LLC, both have products available in the shop, and more vendors may be added in the future.
“I can do customized cutting boards, so I can take, like your grandma’s cookie recipe, and clean that up and engrave that on a cutting board. I can do signatures of a loved one and put that on a keychain, a necklace, anything like that. So I really enjoy doing the custom gifts like that for memorial pieces,” Buck said.
Small items can even be engraved while you wait. More elaborate custom gifts, like engraved portraits, can also be made by request. These are options that fit in perfectly for upcoming holidays and occasions like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, graduation, or Father’s Day.
Speaking of holidays, Buck has some suggestions for Valentine’s Day: ” I have charm necklaces, and they can engrave, like, ‘I loved you’, and then I have, like, the birthstone charms, too, so you can customize a message and then add the charms to it. Those would be great gifts. And then for the guys, obviously, the hats, or if they wanted to do a message on a metal wallet, a keychain, or just something like that.”
The boutique is named after Buck’s grandmother. “My grandma, her middle name was Louise, so it was Barbara Louise, and nobody was named after her. Like, none of us kids got her middle name, so she just gave it to us anyway. So when she would see us, I would be Danielle Louise. Even the boys, like whatever, John Louise or Matt Louise, that was just her thing, and we always thought it was so funny. After she passed, that was just kind of like a special memory that I always thought of. So when I went to name my business, … it was Always Louise. Just to kind of have her legacy live on, because she was just so warm and welcoming and loved everybody she met, and I just really want to portray that same energy in the store, just to love on people and to, just to make them so welcomed and everything when they come in,” Buck shared.
Look for Always Louise on Facebook and at alwayslouise.com. Shop in person at 701 Main Street, Dresden, Wednesday through Thursday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
