Still Trending: Rose Adelizzi's Preppy Palm Has Been in Style for 20 Years
In the center of Avalon’s business district, The Preppy Palm stands out. Its large footprint at the corner of 26th and Dune is punctuated by the palm trees flanking the doorway. Stepping through the door, loyal customers bask in the cool, crisp aesthetic and carefully curated selection of clothing, housewares, jewelry, and gifts. Far from a room full of polo shirts and whale ties as the name might suggest, The Preppy Palm is an oasis of refined style.
Marking its 20th year in business this summer, The Preppy Palm’s run of success reads like a Cinderella story.
Back in the early 2000s, the store’s owner, Rose Adelizzi, was a stay-at-home mother of five young children who loved to make things. She also had an eye for trends. She recalls, “preppy was making another little surge among the kids and all the companies were doing polo shirts again, and all the girls were wearing the little stiped belts, and I thought … ‘This is really a comeback.’”
Always trying her hand at one project or another, Adelizzi started customizing her own handbags. “I always loved Lily Pulitzer fabrics and I was able to buy some old fabrics online and I was lining my handbags with those fabrics,” she shares. “People liked them, and I would sell them to friends or anybody who asked about them.”
Adelizzi’s success making accessories got her entrepreneurial wheels spinning and she started to think bigger. Realizing that churning out more handmade items would require a team of people, she thought about having her own store: “I thought, if it’s a little store, I can buy things and still make my own things, so that is how it kind of got started.”
Before long, Adelizzi opened a very small store in the back of the Woodland Village off Route 9. She named it The Preppy Palm as a nod to the handbags and fabrics that started it all. “My handbags were basically a canvas handbag with a bamboo handle, lined in fabrics, with some striped ribbon accents either tying it closed or somewhere on the bag,” she says. “So, when we were discussing the name, I said, ‘You know, it’s kind of preppy stuff.’ Then my daughters were thinking about Lily Pulitzer and Palm Beach, so it just became The Preppy Palm.”
The name is something Adelizzi embraces, with a twinge of angst. “At times I’ve heard people say, ‘I almost didn’t come in because it said preppy.’ But rest assured, Adelizzi’s talent and grit ensured the store would be defined by more than its moniker.
“The first year of the store, I worked every day, all day,” she says. “My husband was a stay-at-home dad. I would come home and have dinner, then I’d go right up to the work room to either replace what I had just sold or make a custom order.”
The hard work paid off. After one summer, she already needed a bigger store. She eventually moved to a larger storefront toward the front of Woodland Village. “That space was three or four times larger,” she notes. “So, that was my next jumping point: Can I buy for this bigger store? And I could, but I still made things.”
Two short years later, in 2007, while vacationing in Florida, Adelizzi got a last-minute offer from a realtor to move the store onto the island and set up shop in Avalon. After some debate and negotiation, Adelizzi took the next leap.
“We got back from Florida, and we had a month to get that store up and running in Avalon,” she recalls. “It was doable, but I was on the phone all day long trying to find people who still had merchandise left. When I opened the store, I think the paint was still wet and the phone didn’t work. But it all worked out.”
And then some. “I don’t know if it was extra gloomy or rainy that summer, but we were very busy,” she says. “I said to my husband at the end of that summer, ‘Oh God, we need a bigger store.” Before long, they moved once more.
Today, the Preppy Palm anchors a prominent corner in Avalon and occupies 4,000 square feet of space. Featuring an eclectic mix of bright, beautiful merchandise, the store is colorful, refreshing, and crisp.
That spacious, cool vibe is both intentional and inspired. “When we would go shopping as a family, my husband and I were always drawn to Ralph Lauren stores,” she says. “We liked how clean they were, and the white fixtures that had nice molding on them.”
Luckily, Adelizzi’s husband was skilled in construction and able to make their vision a reality. “He was able to build out all of our stores for us,” she shares. “So, it’s a really nice store, but it didn’t cost us more than the materials. That’s been great for us. He had the talent.”
For her part, Adelizzi has a particular talent for choosing and showcasing items that customers want to own. Rather than data and spreadsheets, she relies on her own intuition: “When I’m buying for the store, I’m thinking, ‘Could I see it in my house?’ It’s definitely just my eye and me personally. I have to like it.”
For example, Adelizzi has an affinity for lemons. However, she’s particular about them. “There’s always something lemony in The Preppy Palm. But it can’t just be, ‘Oh, those are lemons, let me grab those.’ I see lemon dishes all over the place,” she says. “It has to be something about this lemon, and probably because it has blue and white in it, that attracted me.”
Another Preppy Palm standard is the store’s annual theme. While customers may not even notice it, Adelizzi always has a little extra inspiration going on.
“Sometimes I’m on a site or I’ll see a picture, it could be just one thing,” she says. “Like this year I saw someone decorate a wall with vintage tennis rackets and thought that was really cool. So that got me snowballing on the vintage tennis rackets. We also always have a little golf going on for the men. So, I could snowball on the golf and tennis. And I’ve been fighting pickleball for years, but now I think it’s time. So, this year’s theme is golf, tennis, and pickleball, and one part of the store is all ‘themed up,’ from the tabletop to the clothing.”
Helping Adelizzi maintain The Preppy Palm’s signature style and customer service, dedicated store manager Amy O’Neil has been with the boutique for over a decade. “She has helped us in more ways than one,” Adelizzi says. “Amy’s in the store all the time and she’s so pleasant with everyone. She treats the store like it’s her own and I love that she does that.”
Adelizzi also loves watching her now-grown children exploring their own entrepreneurial ventures: “I think now it’s looking at the next generation. It’s looking at my girls and seeing them do their own thing. They watched me all these years and now they’ve got it, too.”
To that end, Adelizzi’s daughter Grace recently opened her own boutique in Sea Isle called Izzi & Lu. Taking after her mom, Grace has curated a fresh, fun selection of items with the goal of “bringing color back into homes.”
And even as Rose Adelizzi looks toward the next generation, and loves being a grandmother now, she has no plans to slow down at The Preppy Palm. In fact, here’s a little-known secret: She still makes handmade items that are sold in the store.
“I don’t really advertise it, but there’s always something in the store that I’ve made,” she says. “I think it drives my family crazy, because there’s always a mess somewhere in the house, because I got on some new kick. But I often see something and think, ‘I can make it.’”
So, while much has changed in 20 years of The Preppy Palm, so much has remained the same. Rose Adelizzi is still the quiet, creative, savvy force behind the blockbuster boutique, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s a 24/7 thing and I don’t think it would be what it is today, if I didn’t love it,” she says. “And I love it.”
