BRIDAL UPCYCLE: Unbox the Dress helps brides aiming to update their family treasures.

• Author: Gentry, Connie

The wedding business is reinvigorated after the pandemic pause, making it prime time for Grace Lightner, 32, to build a Winston-Salem business that repurposes vintage wedding dresses. Her vision is to turn thousands of grandmothers' lace gowns from the 1950s or mother-of-the-bride's 1980s satin sensations into keepsake heirlooms for contemporary brides.

Lightner and her mother, Lorraine Stewart, started Unbox the Dress in 2018 to sell sentimentality, but with an online platform and creative process that has been strategically positioned to become a national brand.

"This business is built on nostalgia and wrapped in sentimentality, but we've done a lot of work to do this in a way that is scalable," says Lightner. That includes intellectual property that encompasses a 250-page production manual, quality standards and customer care training with a goal of never having an unhappy customer.

"Our research told us 70% of married women in the U.S. are storing at least one, if not multiple, wedding dresses--that's when we realized this could be a national brand, because no one else was owning this concept and there was a universal need."

The average bridal gown, regardless of its era, provides 6 to 7 yards of satin and lace that can be changed into complementary wedding accessories, a rehearsal dinner dress, or the best-selling "getting ready robe."

Last year, the average bride spent $ 1,63 5 on her wedding dress, while the average cost of weddings topped $28,000, including receptions, according to The Knot online wedding website.

The duo says a key to success was picking Winston-Salem after a search that included Atlanta; Greenville, South Carolina; and Danville, Virginia. A $50,000 grant in 2020 from the Durham-based NC IDEA entrepreneurs' support group helped pave the way, complemented by the availability of skilled seamstresses and designers. Such grants require an in-state residency, so Lightner and Stewart moved from North Canton, Ohio, in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

"We considered Charlotte, but the cost of square footage would have meant we had to locate an hour outside of the city versus being in downtown Winston-Salem," Lightner says.

The company quickly outgrew a 4,500-square-foot space, relocating last July to a 12,500-square-foot facility near Wake Forest University.

On any given day, some 400 wedding dresses are moving through the company's plant. Revenues reached $1 million in 2022 and Unbox the Dress had processed 7,000 customer...