Micky and Kristen Lloyd lean on a pink Volkswagen Beetle, the decoration which sets Dottie’s Children’s Boutique apart.
Choctaw-owned stores bring customers back to Common Roots
by Brandon Frye
Choctaw Nation
McAlester, Okla. - Husband and wife Micky and Kristen Lloyd are at the front of the movement to shop locally in McAlester, and are the entrepreneurs of three successful businesses built up by their own hands and from their own ambition.
The Lloyds have worked together for years. Their first downtown brick-and-mortar store, Studio 23 Photography, has served the McAlester area since 2000. When the two noticed a need for children’s clothes during photo shoots, the first business snowballed into a second business, Dottie’s Children’s Boutique. Now, the couple is helping revive local trade in downtown McAlester with a third business: Common Roots, an eclectic mercantile housing an assortment of local and unique gifts and treats.
Being a Choctaw citizen, Micky says the new store in particular was their way of showing a “sense of being local, what ties us together, where we come from and where we go back.” He has deep roots to the local community and Choctaw people. His great-great grandfather Buck White founded the Oklahoma town of White Oak, Okla. And his uncle Rubin White is a former Speaker of the Choctaw Nation’s Tribal Council.
“Common Roots has been open for two months now, and it’s been great,” Micky said. “I couldn’t have expected it to be any better than it has been.”
Dottie’s Children’s Boutique and Common Roots now stand as side-by-side storefronts offering goods to interested customers, but in very different ways.
The children’s boutique is a bright, light-filled space, colored joyfully and inviting children to play and interact. “We just wanted to do something different,” Kristen said. “If you look around you can see how fun and funky it is.”
The children have many reasons to remember and revisit the boutique. The Lloyds took apart an old Volkswagen Beetle, cut it down the middle, painted it pink, and placed it as a unique decoration. The shop has toys and an area for children to make their own perfumes and lotions. And according to the Lloyds, the little ones also enjoy running back and forth through the broken down wall connecting the two businesses like a portal.
Next door the aesthetics of Common Roots take on a more serious, natural element. The urban and industrial break through and give way to the rustic. Throughout the store, holes in plaster uncover arrowed designs and logos, the painted black tin roof reflects light shining from the yellow bulbs spelling out the store name just inside the entryway, and wooden shelves hold hand-made items and Oklahoma treats.
“We built all of the tables, the shelving, displays, the bar. We did everything ourselves,” Micky said. It took plenty of time and remodeling, and Micky said he and his wife let the building tell them what it needed as they uncovered it.
One of the more unique features of Common Roots is the bar with a countertop made entirely of pennies. They said it is where men tend to sit, drink, and eat chocolates as women shop around. Behind the bar, they keep 30 ice-cold beverages: root beers, cream sodas, and pops with pure cane sugar, all cold enough to develop ice crystals after leaving the ice box.
Locals and travelers alike are welcome at Common Roots and Dottie’s Children’s Boutique, which can be found at 111 and 113 East Choctaw Avenue in McAlester, Oklahoma.
The couple said McAlester is very important to them, and they want to support shopping local. “We thought we would do what we can to revitalize downtown, we just didn’t want to let it die. We do what we can to try to bring it back and inspire others to do the same,” Micky said.