Business Profile The Little Shop Niwot

Fortitude and resilience are two words that perfectly describe Sarah Magee. The office manager of a tax accounting firm with clients across the United States, Magee, the mother of two young men, is also owner of The Little Shop Niwot in Cottonwood Square.

The Little Shop features lovely local art, gifts and children's toys and books, and sits next to Winot Coffee Company.

Born in Denver and now living in Erie, Magee said, "I moved all around as a kid and went to 15 different schools. My past is not very pretty."

Her single mother, an alcoholic who later died by suicide, "moved around a lot," she said, and when they ended up back in Colorado, Magee said, she "dropped out of high school at 15 almost 16 – the beginning of my junior year– out of necessit

"I was hungry, I needed a job," she said. Magee had a brother 10 years younger than her who she had essentially raised, but by 16, hungry and tired of maternal abuse, she moved to Denver and worked three different jobs, starting at Old Chicago – a pizza and beer restaurant in Denver where, she said with a wide smile, "I was the hostess with the mostess."

"Then I also picked up a job at Paradise Cleaners and found another job at the same time in a Mexican place making burritos."

She met her first husband – a chef at Old Chicago, after a few years. They moved to Kansas when she was 21, opened an Old Chicago pizza restaurant there, and welcomed her first son. "We were together several years," she said, but eventually they divorced and she moved back to Colorado.

Magee then worked in the Old Chicago corporate headquarters in Louisville in the payroll department and began studying for certifications in the business and accounting side of the industry.

Magee eventually remarried, welcomed her second child, and started climbing the corporate ladder in a national CPA firm where she still works part-time from home, while also running The Little Shop with the help of some local artists.

Despite an exhausting schedule, Magee has a charming, sunny personality and is clearly not someone who feels sorry for herself. She enjoys running her local business and she is clearly delighted with her shop. She said she is happy that most of her neighboring Niwot shops survived through the Covid lockdown.

One reason she opened the shop, she said, was that although she kept rising in her human resources job, without a high school or college degree, she had "hit a wall" in terms of how far she could be promoted in the industry.

"I was fed up," she explained. "It was time to start my own business and an opportunity to do something I loved." Her first business was "a mobile paint party company" where she'd bring all the supplies to a location and "teach a three-hour painting class." Her venues ranged from retirement homes, where she taught the elderly, to Niwot Elementary School's after school enrichment program.

"I would bring easels, brushes, canvases and start painting. I didn't know it at the time but I come from a long line of female oil painters. I went to churches where there were hundreds of attendees for my painting classes and went to parties for amateur painters on weekends." But she said eventually her success became "too laborious and I was missing my kids."

So instead, this resilient woman started The Little Shop in January 2021, an outgrowth of the Little Shops at Niwot, a holiday craft collective. In just three months, she found several local artists who not only help her with staffing but display their art, clothing, gifts and childrens' items.

Magee has just renewed her lease for another two years. "I love getting to know the people (of Niwot). My neighbors are amazing."