Dawne Fusco, owner of the shop Body Sense in Newburyport, is used to hearing herself referred to as “the Body Sense lady” or just “Body Sense.”  What she did not expect was to hear herself referred to in that way while on vacation in Italy.

While recovering by the pool from jet lag, she was confronted by a customer and her family in Sorrento. They kept insisting that she must remember them. She laughed:  “I have wacky customers!”  Wacky they may be, but they are loyal. She added: “A lot of women come in ‘for five minutes’ and end up staying an hour.”

 

This is the part of running her shop that she loves – the people. Not only the ones who stop in on a regular basis and even the ones just walking by on State Street. Back in 1987, when she was offered the business to buy, her plan was to pay off the loan and then sell the business at a profit. Twenty-one years and two changes of location later, she’s still there, dispensing fragrant oils and other bath and body products to the people she credits for her success.

She said she knows that the people of Newburyport will support her, come what may: “I have a really hard time thinking about not being here and it’s because of the people … Right now, I think the city is heading for real change.”

With Stephen Karp and his New England Development buying up a chunk of commercial property in the city, things have been a little tense in the retail sector. Fusco says that camaraderie that so long has sustained the small business owners in the city may soon become a thing of the past with chain stores moving into empty storefronts. Fusco said: “We used to talk a lot more .You never sold something that someone else sold. We sent people to each other’s stories.”

Now there are more managers standing in for absent business owners. No more going down the street and saying to a restaurant owner, “Just make me something for dinner, please.”

Fusco said: “It was like a family. We don’t know if that’s going to continue.” She bought the business from Sarah Bodge, who had come from Berkeley, California.

“A lot of people remember Sarah,” she saud. “She was always into stuff.” Fusco, at the time a mother of three, lodging an exchange student and working, did not initially think that retail was for her. She got a lot of help – from her landlord, Tina Klidaras (owner of Tina’s European Fashions), and other business owners along State Street - as well as from her customers. Fusco said: “She (Klidaras) and I kind of taught each other.”

A lifelong resident of West Newbury, Fusco recalls the ‘old’ days when she could run to the bank and leave the store open. The customers would just wait for her to return.

She started out in Threadneedle Alley, by what is now the Rockfish restaurant, and then moved to 12 State St. Now she’s at 6 State St., in a modest-sized store patronized by what seems to be nearly everyone in town.

“You look back and think ‘How the heck did I do that?’” she said.

In her first year, she worked seven days a week and took one vacation – a trip to Disneyland that had been scheduled before she purchased the business.

“I also had to figure out how to make it grow,” she added. Having gone through hard economic times and long, hard winters in Newburyport, Fusco said that she has learned that to succeed, businesses have to cater to the people that live in the community first. Tourists come second.

“Those that catered to tourists didn’t make it,” she observes. “And the people that live here will support me. It’s a long winter down here.”

Dawne Fusco says she’s not going to make millions, ever, from her store. “But I’m still here … I’m having fun.”