How this ‘Hallmark town’ gets its country charm from a Main Street serial entrepreneur

Editor’s note: The following story was produced through a paid partnership with MOSourceLink, which boasts a mission to help entrepreneurs and small businesses across the state of Missouri grow and succeed by providing free, easy access to the help they need — when they need it.

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WARSAW, Mo. — Owning her own boutique — and building — in her hometown of Warsaw, Missouri,  is a dream come true for Jennifer Flores.

The Warsaw native and proud first-generation Mexican-American opened Country Charm in 2018 at the age of 22 in a rented space on Main Street before buying her own downtown building — also on Main Street — in 2023.

Shoppers peruse designs inside Country Charm in downtown Warsaw, Missouri; courtesy photo

“I have a lot of passion for my community and for Warsaw,” she explained. “I think it’s the most special place in the world, honestly. And so when I went away to college, I knew that I always wanted to come back and work in some aspect. I just didn’t know exactly what aspect.”

“I love the community; I love the closeness,” she continued. “We always joke, but it’s the truth: It’s like a Hallmark town, and I just love, honestly, everything about it.”

At Country Charm, Flores sells her own line of clothing that she designs and screen prints, as well as boutique clothing in inclusive sizes. Her wholesale operation puts those custom designs in more than 300 boutiques.

Click here for event info about Country Charm’s Saturday, April 26 celebration as Flores’ brand turns 7.

“We actually ship to multiple different boutiques and customers throughout the United States and a few outside of the United States, which is pretty cool,” she noted. “Each one of those pieces is 100 percent designed by me and printed in house, which has offered more jobs, which is amazing.”

But even after upgrading from a 300-square-foot rental space to her own 5,000-square-foot, newly renovated building, she isn’t done investing in Warsaw, she said. In November 2024 — across the street from Country Charm — she opened the Charming Market, a retail space for other local makers. As someone who participated in craft fairs during college, she knows firsthand the maker hustle.

“It’s been really special to be able to give them the opportunity to do it fully on their own,” she added. “It’s gone really well, thankfully, so far.”

Click here to follow County Charm on Facebook.

Tourism goes rural

Flores — who is also an incoming city alderwoman and the secretary of the Warsaw Chamber of Commerce — also helps host multiple events in downtown, including the Boutique Crawl, which incorporates boutiques throughout Benton County, and a fall event, which shuts down Main Street and brings in local vendors.

“Jo Ann [Lane, director of Benton County Economic Development] told me, ‘You’ve increased the tax revenue for Warsaw by a lot,’” Flores said. “It’s like a big deal. The amount of people we are able to bring into town for the events that we throw, it’s thousands of people, which is such a blessing. And I’m just grateful that I have the support that I do from locals and the people that are not from here.”

“Flores is a huge asset to Warsaw and the county,” Jo Ann explains. “Every year on her anniversary she has a big celebration that brings hundreds of people to Warsaw for her celebration, specials, and drawings. People are lined up down the sidewalk before she even opens. Later this month, she will have her seven year celebration. Last year, she also did a Chiefs kickoff in the fall and had other vendors participate. All of these events bring people in to shop the town.”

With more people traveling to Warsaw, she says, she is also planning to open a vacation rental called Charming Properties. She says she hopes to be done with renovations by this summer.

“I love that we’re bringing more tourism to Benton County,” she explained. “So we need places for people to stay, because they’re using Warsaw as their vacation or their weekend spot, which is such an amazing thing for Warsaw and for all the small businesses.”

From the start

Flores grew up in an entrepreneurial family, she shared. Her grandparents and father all owned their own businesses; she knew she wanted to follow suit.

“I always just had the entrepreneurial itch,” Flores explained. “I always knew I wanted to be my own boss. I just didn’t know in what form.”

After getting an associates degree in business management, she went on to major in engineering at University of Central Missouri. During her last semester, she had to get an internship at a place that used computer-aided design, or CAD,  programming. Instead of traveling to Columbia, Missouri, to an architecture firm, she decided to intern with a local screen printing company that used CAD.

“I loved being around the T-shirt shop, being able to create your own things,” Flores said.

This experience combined with her selling handmade home decor at craft fairs in college, led her to opening Country Charm, Flores noted.

“That’s just kind of how it transpired,” she said.

Flores has bootstrapped all her business ventures — including renovating her new downtown location — but she said she’s still gotten a lot of support from the community, especially Benton County Economic Development.

“Jo Ann Lane has been amazing to work with, just as far as questions and different things,” Flores said. “If you are driven, you can learn on your own, just talk to the right people, being around the right people, associating yourself with the right people. I always say, ‘If the answer is “no,” you’re asking the wrong person.’ Not getting discouraged, having confidence in your plan and what you believe in, that’s something that I feel like anybody who has a small business has to have.”