With a name like Bad Sister, you might not expect Columbia’s newest boutique to be the family affair that it is.

“There was a wall here. My dad tore it down in two days,” owner Heather Kapp tells a customer perusing her shop for the first time, while Kapp’s 5-year-old son, Peyton, sits in the designated children’s room watching TV and munching on pizza. In fact, with the entire family pitching in, Bad Sister went from concept to reality in about a month.

The doors opened Dec. 11, and this is the official grand opening week, with daily specials to introduce the shop to the community.

“I’ve been thinking about doing this forever,” Kapp said. “I just finally woke up one day and decided I could do it myself.”

After working as the general manager of Ulta in Fairview Heights, Kapp, who lives near Millstadt, knows a thing or two about retail and fashion. The rest of her recipe for success comes from passion for what she does, an on-point sense of style and instinct for what her shoppers want — and, of course, her family.

“My sister is three years younger than me. My mom always used to very endearingly say, ‘This is my good daughter,’ and, about me, ‘And this is my bad daughter.’

“I was always missing curfew, spending too much money,” Kapp adds with a laugh.
Mallory Dauphin, AKA the “good sister,” is involved too, helping staff the store, doing graphic design work for marketing materials, and, most of all, beaming about her sister’s accomplishment.

“This has been her lifelong dream, so to see her putting all the work into this, I’m just really proud of her.”

But ultimately, it is the merchandise that will make or break a retail operation, and Kapp feels confident hers is different enough from other boutiques that Bad Sister will stand out and stand on its own as a shop that caters to all ages and all budgets.

“We have such a good range of age-appropriate clothes, I really think a person of any age or size could find something to wear here, from 16 to 60,” Kapp said.

She also carefully chooses the merchandise she carries for price point, with tops starting in the $17 range and usually topping out at about $50.

She offers an award-winning line of skin care products, as well as some deliciously scented candles, from Farmhouse Fresh, and plans to add Spartina handbags and accessories later this year. For the discerning southern Illinois and St. Louis area shoppers, these two brands can only be found at Bad Sister.

Kapp said some people questioned her choice of location, on Columbia’s South Main Street next to Pizza Hut.

“We picked Columbia because it’s kind of a melting pot,” Kapp said. “I have a lot of friends who live in St. Louis and a lot of people I know who live in Belleville, and I think Columbia is really becoming the destination place that people are talking about.”

As far as picking the new building south of downtown, Kapp has her reasons for that as well.

“I did it for convenience,” she simply said. “People can pull right into the parking lot, they don’t have to look for a place to park, and they don’t have to walk far to the store.”

Once word gets around about Bad Sister, shoppers certainly won’t mind a bit of a walk to get to Kapp’s cozy shop with beautifully arranged merchandise, family-friendly atmosphere and unique clothes.

Bad Sister is located at 1005 South Main Street in Columbia. Find the shop on Facebook, visit the website at www.mkt.com/bad-sister-boutique, call 281-2873, or just stop in.