At merely 20-years-old, full-time college student Maggie Corbitt opened the doors to her own retail store in downtown Guntersville last fall. Fusing her passion for the outdoors and high-end fashion, Corbitt & Co. Lakeside Apparel and Gear offers everything from swimwear to fancy dresses to hunting vests.
Currently in her third year at Samford University in Birmingham, Maggie travels back and forth to run her store and finish her education in Entrepreneurship, a fitting major for someone who started her business so young. According to Maggie, entrepreneurship is in her blood.
“It’s something I have grown up with,” she said. “I do think that for people who are entrepreneurial, it is more like a personality trait. You almost have to be a workaholic. You’re never not working. I’m always thinking, what can I do to get to this goal?”
While Maggie, now 21, has the drive and work ethic to succeed, overcoming her young age has been more of a challenge than she initially realized.
“I still struggle with people taking me seriously because of my age, so sometimes my age is an issue,” she said. “I had to pinch myself because who is going to take a 20-year-old seriously? Really, though, I think, at the end of the day, if you want to do something and it’s truly what you’re meant to do, I don’t think anything is going to stop you.”
Maggie is an outdoor girl at heart and would “live in a swimsuit” if she could. She loves to swim, surf, paddleboard, wakeboard, hunt and spend time on the lake or at her family’s farm, all of which helped inspire the inventory she carries at Corbitt & Co., in addition to her interest in high fashion. The store enabled her to marry her two passions in a more practical way, which wasn’t always the case:
“One time my Dad asked me to go put out corn in the deer feeders at the farm,” she recalled. “Not thinking about what I was wearing, I just threw on my Carhartt overalls with a jacket over it and my muck boots. As it turned out, I had on a Chanel sweatshirt and I just didn’t think anything of it. So, I had on my Carhartt overalls with a Chanel sweatshirt and muck boots. I really love the outdoors and fashion and sometimes it doesn’t mix together very conventionally.”
Future plans for Corbitt & Co. include a possible second location at the beach, which she believes could open up new opportunities for inventory and reach even more potential customers. But she might have something completely different in mind for a new venture first:
“I love to cook, so I would really love to open a restaurant some day,” she said. “That might be something I would do before opening another store.”
Corbitt & Co. is located at 509 Gunter Ave. and can be found online and on social media.
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