By Ed Avis
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Terry Sinopoli and her daughter Mollie at a facepainting event.
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Cindy, Donna, Arlene and Terry
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Another important family connection: Terry donated a kidney to her brother Peter in 2019.
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The siblings: Victor, Terry, Peter and Sharmeer.
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Terry's children, Mollie and Matthew.
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Terry and her fiance Vinny.
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Mildred "Molly" Stephens.
When you talk to Terry Sinopoli about her work in the retail costume business, you quickly realize one key thing: Everything she does is connected to family.
The first connection is obvious – Terry, who was elected to the NCA Board of Directors in August, is among the fourth generation of family owners of Arlene’s Costumes in Rochester, NY. The company was founded by her great grandmother, Mildred “Molly” Stephens, and Molly’s daughter Arlene in 1956.
“They started it as The Next to New Shop, which was a daring thing for that time: a consignment, vintage clothing store,” Terry says. “They started the shop because my great grandfather had passed away and they needed to make money. They knew how to sew and made some costumes. Then they started making more costumes because people came in saying, ‘My kid is in a play’ or ‘I’m this this community theater’ and that part of the business grew.”
In 1975, the store – which by then was called Arlene’s Costumes – moved to a four-bedroom colonial house which accommodated the retail sales downstairs and living quarters for Molly and Arlene upstairs.
That big house is the second family connection in this story. Terry now works in the house, which is the administrative office for Arlene’s Costumes. Molly still lives upstairs, together with her sister Donna, who is Terry’s grandmother. Naturally, the house is packed with meaning for Terry.
“Since it was also Donna’s house, I would stay over a lot so I have a lot of memories. My earliest memory is running around behind the counter,” Terry says. “I would hear someone say, ‘I need this or that…’ and I would go get it. Arlene will tell you that her fondest memory is of me as a baby sitting by the front counter. I didn’t have much hair, but she put a bow in it anyways. Some college kid came up the counter to pay for something and said, ‘What’s that?’ Arlene said, ‘It’s a baby! Can’t you see the bow in her hair?’”
Terry worked parttime in the store throughout high school and college. She earned a degree in political science in 1999 from St. John Fisher College in Rochester and a masters in public administration in 2001 from SUNY Brockport. She interned for a local congresswoman and then worked for a New York state assemblyman, and eventually for the state Department of Health. Those jobs took her to Washington DC for one year and to Albany for several years.
Which leads to the next family connection in this story: “I realized I really liked being home and I missed my family,” she says. “So I moved home and went into retail management and training.”
Happily back in Rochester, Terry had a daughter in 2007 and a son in 2010. By the time her son was three, she realized he was not speaking as well as his peers. Doctors eventually diagnosed autism, but getting to that point required numerous appointments that required her to take time off from work.
“My employer at the time didn’t like that,” she remembers. “So I came here to the house and cried my eyes out. But it was a good thing because within an hour I had a new job here! And not just a job, but something I really loved doing.”
Terry started working at Arlene’s fulltime in 2014. By then the store had moved to a new location 2.5 miles away, but the offices were still in the family home.
She dove into the store’s website and social media accounts and brought them up to current standards. In 2016 she created a relationship with Amazon to sell their products through that venue – today they list 3,500 to 4,000 SKUs on the platform. And since then she’s added Ebay and Walmart.com. Online sales today make up 85 percent of the company’s retail sales.
But Terry, who is now the firm’s marketing and customer service manager, does not just work behind the desk. Among many other tasks, she does airbrush face painting and temporary tattoos, which has become an important revenue source. The store’s face painting clients include the Buffalo Bills, local colleges and corporations. They also set up booths at festivals – such as Rochester’s annual Lilac Festival -- and private parties.
“We started painting for the Buffalo Bills four years ago. We’re at the field four hours before every home game and we’ll paint hundreds of fans,” she says, adding that the Bills pay Arlene’s a flat fee for the service; the fans get the face painting done for free. “We get people from all over the country, and a lot of regulars. The first game of the season it might be 85 degrees, and the last one in January can be minus 2 degrees!”
And the face painting is the last family connection in this article: Terry’s daughter, who is 14, now paints faces beside her mom. She and her cousins represent the fifth generation of Arlene’s Costumes.
“I think the store will continue in the family for a very long time,” Terry says. “We’ve been around for 65 years, and I think the next 65 years will be a blast.”