A Stitch in Time

100 after opening, and a couple years after closing, a Little Traverse Bay institution is back.

When Glenna Gattle’s family store reopened last year in Harbor Springs, it was as if a family tradition had come back to life. It was also an historic homecoming with a connection to the very early days of Petoskey.

The first Gattle’s store opened in 1919, in Petoskey, and closed in 2016, following the death Glenna’s father, Tom Gattle.

So, bringing the linen store back to northern Michigan was as much about following tradition as it was a business decision, Glenna said. She recalls that while working at the store last summer, she met customers whose relationships with Gattle’s go back as long as her own — four generations.

“Gattle’s is like an institution. It’s almost like a member of your family. People would come in, customers would come and say, ‘Oh my gosh, I still have my mom’s sheets. I still have my grandmother’s tablecloth,’” she said. “It’s an institution. And that’s why it was so hard to close it. We’re all over the place, we children, but it’s good to have a Gattle’s in existence.”

Gattle’s was founded in Cincinnati in 1904 by Glenna Gattle’s great-grandmother Henrietta and Henrietta’s son Otto. At the time, she went to people’s homes to sell, by appointment only, one coveted item: lace window coverings.

Henrietta and Otto opened the Petoskey store after their wealthy Cincinnati customers convinced the family to follow them to northern Michigan, where so many retreated each summer and had — or were building — second homes.

“Her customers encouraged her to come north because they were building these beautiful big cottages,” Glenna said.  

Those folks wanted the kind of high-quality lace coverings — and eventually linens, housewares, and other luxe goods — in their vacation cottages that they had back home in Cincinnati. Wise to the demand and opportunity, Henrietta Gattle came up to Petoskey to open a store, but in line with her customers’ northern presence each summer, she kept it open only four months of the year.

As the popularity and population of Petoskey grew, so, too, did Gattle’s notoriety in the region. Its reputation and reach took a bigger leap after World War II, when the shop hired returning soldiers to become traveling salesmen. The veterans went around the country with Gattle’s fine linens, setting up shows in fancy hotels and conference centers.

Glenna’s father, Tom, took over the business in the 1950s. He, too, set his sights on an expansion outside the Midwest. However, he went for something more fixed than salesmen with mobile linen displays; he opened a third Gattle’s store — this one in Fort Lauderdale. 

The Petoskey store was hardly left in the dust. Like his grandmother Henrietta before, Tom Gattle moved his family north each summer to tend to customers there. Glenna said she’s spent every summer of her life in Petoskey except one, and though she’s never lived there year-round, you could rightly consider her and two of her three siblings natives: Each was born during the family’s summer stays in Petoskey.

Over the years, the Petoskey outlet changed locations several times. For a time, it was located where Cutler’s stands today, on the downtown corner of Howard and Lake streets. That storefront’s large windows served as ideal showcases for beds made up with Gattle’s fancy sheets and duvets, but after the Gattles weren’t able to purchase the building from its owner, they opted to move their shop a short distance away. 

The store remained in Petoskey for decades. But, despite the entire family’s dedication to it, none of the children fully took on the business, pursuing instead their own careers outside of retail.

Upon the passing of Glenna’s father, Tom, four years ago, that changed; the part-owner and family friend who was running the Petoskey location at the time, John Cheney, decided he wanted to retire, and the Petoskey shop was closed while the estate got sorted.

Once settled, the business was turned over to the four Gattle’s children, who, though involved in the running of the family business, rely on managers for the day-to-day operations of their stores. In the spirit of their ancestors, they made one big change — in 2019, they decided to reopen their northern Michigan Gattle’s in Harbor Springs, a switch Glenna said made sense because the shop remains in, basically, the same area but is closer to many of the people who are their best customers.

It is those customers, after all, who have ensured Gattle’s longevity. The stores — now in Harbor Springs; Naples, Florida; and online — has done well over the years and was able to remain largely immune to the economic crashes that have occurred through the course of its life, said Glenna, because of the customers the stores have cultivated: buyers who have money no matter what the economy looks like. 

“I was told that we survived the Depression and all of that because people with money always had money,” Glenna said. “I just really feel like the wealthy can and always would be wealthy. If they’re wise about it, I guess.”

Family lore (and numerous previously published articles) has it that the stores have even supplied bed linen for a Pope’s visit to the United States, to Queen Elizabeth II, and to other notable people such as Susan Hayward, Rose Kennedy, and Richard Nixon.

Glenna said the store served those kinds of customers because Gattle’s had cultivated a reputation and relationships with the best European suppliers; when a queen or a pope visited and wanted what was familiar, those people’s handlers, as it were, turned to them.

The store survives because it is associated with that kind of quality, she said.

“The other thing about Gattle’s is we have to stay at a high quality because we don't want to compete with other businesses,” she said. “We can't compete with Bed, Bath and Beyond, or J.C. Penney’s. We can't compete with them.”

Abby Rogers, who started as manager of the Harbor Springs location this year, said she’s been a customer of Gattle’s for many of the 20 years she’s lived in the Petoskey area.

“I’m a local designer, so I used to take my clients in the Gattle’s in downtown Petoskey for years,” Rogers said.

Rogers said that the store endures because its products are of a higher quality than what can be found in ordinary stores and are actually healthier and more comfortable for the skin. When people buy cheap sheets, she said, they are cheating themselves out of good sleep because the synthetic materials like polyester that they are made of aren’t healthy or comfortable.

“Higher-end bed linen is kind of like a lost trade; we’ve turned into a disposable nation. … Even most flannel sheets are made of polyester. … People don’t know the difference, and they buy it because it’s a cheap $30 sheet set,” she said. “It’s a lost art. It’s a lost trade.”   

View On Our Website