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Colby Tredway
Colby Tredway takes over Flutter in Northeast Minneapolis' Saint Anthony Main.
Colby Tredway’s journey is a bit like a game of Monopoly. Advance 3 spaces, pay $500 when you pass Go, test your luck on Chance. Eventually, his little top hat lands on SE Main St., in Saint Anthony Main, and he expands his empire with contemporary bridal shop, Flutter.
Earlier this month, Colby Tredway threw a rooftop bash atop Flutter to celebrate his ownership. Industry professionals, brides and media friends were invited to celebrate Colby spreading his wings on a new endeavor.
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interior lounge area at flutter
Flutter in Saint Anthony Main was founded in 2006 by Kolby Kipp Fahlsing.
On a typical day, you might find Colby at Cov Wayzata or Edina, Burch, or Manny’s with his friend, roommate, and the general manager of Diamond Bride and CFO of Colby John, Mikayla Kincart. He says they do everything together–including traveling and co-parenting two puppies together. When we talked on the phone last week, they were planning a mani-pedi day. In his free time, he is usually in Des Moines visiting family, in Omaha, or enjoying his other passions: cars, jet skis and boats.
Colby is young-at-heart, sleeping until 10 or 11 a.m., working from noon until 7 or 8 p.m., avoiding cooking, and staying up until 3 or 4 a.m. to place orders and work with his manufacturers, who are 13 hours ahead. His life resembles that of a college student, but with a bridal business folio and without the massive black cloud of student debt.
While Colby didn’t go to college, you could say he went to the school of life.
After graduating high school in 2012, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, with pre-med intentions and dropped out, intending to transfer colleges. Between semesters, he got started in the bridal industry, as he says, “doing the crap work that nobody else really wanted to do,” at a bridal shop in Des Moines, Iowa. He soon started working with clients and designing dresses at the shop. In spring 2013, at 19, Colby took a chance and temporarily opened a prom dress shop in Omaha, still working weekdays in Des Moines.
He grew the sales of the bridal shop to almost $1.5 million annually. “I started to realize that there’s nothing in this industry that I really want to do for anybody else. I wanted to work for myself,” he says. After four years of making $12 an hour without commission, and driving 45 miles each way, he quit and moved back to Florida. He lived on nothing, unable to make a car payment or visit the grocery store for four months.
His $5 million deal to buy the Des Moines bridal shop fell through, which he says would have been his 22-year-old self’s “only real validation for not going to college.” But one space ahead, there was another chance coming.
The next day, Colby received a call from John and Genie Lundeen, the original owners of Diamond Bride in Plymouth, Minnesota. They asked if he was interested in purchasing their bridal store, should he ever find himself in the area.
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a sign that says officially a diamond bride
Colby Tredway purchased Diamond Bride on August 1, 2017.
He promptly moved to Minneapolis, a place he never thought he would live. Ten months later, on August 1, 2017, he purchased Diamond Bride. The Monday after the ribbon cutting, he launched his first collection of Colby John bridal gowns.
I asked how he feels about Minneapolis, as a transplant. “I don’t think anybody really loves living in negative temperatures,” he started. But overall, he has positive things to say about our Nice state. “The politics here aren’t as terrible. People are nicer. The city is cleaner. The city is healthier.” He says it’s better for small businesses and entrepreneurs, but easily competes with the Windy City. (And we’re less windy, so that’s a win!) “I have no complaints other than that it gets terribly freezing,” he summarized.
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two models both wearing wedding dresses
Tredway has designed three lines of bridal gowns for his label, Colby John, which he started shortly after purchasing Diamond Bride.
Two lines of dresses later, Colby is preparing to release his third collection of wedding dresses at the end of this week, and the Colby John label is in over 150 stores. Diamond Bride is celebrating its 50th year this year, and Colby’s staff is the youngest team of any bridal store in the Twin Cities, with everyone being younger than 25-year-old Colby (who is soon-to-be 26, to his dismay, or more concisely, “barf”). The store does three times the sales volume it did when he purchased it.
He will release a second Colby John collection exclusive to Flutter that caters to the slighter higher price range of Flutter brides. As he takes over at Flutter, he hopes to drop the price point average for the store slightly, widen the selection of dresses to include up to size 24 or higher, and offer a wider price range of dresses. “Inclusion and diversity is what makes things grow,” he says. “Being niche isn’t about being different or unique. Being niche is about restricting yourself from standing out.”
Expanding offerings may mean eliminating some designers’ lines that don’t function with his vision for Flutter’s future. The store will also be open hourly weekdays, and on Saturday, and Sunday, a change from the “By Appointment Only” white lettering on the often-closed Flutter door of the previous 13 years.
“If I remove a little bit of the niche that has been Flutter, I will be able to help so many more brides in this city,” Colby says.
How did he end up owning another bridal boutique in Minneapolis, I wondered. Colby met the previous owner of Flutter at a Wedding Guys show and they connected right away. “She’s from Iowa, and I’m from Iowa,” he says. So, you have the corn field thing to bond over. “We’re both named Colby, and we both have bridal stores in Minneapolis.” I laughed, how could this even be true?! “We are really very much the same person in so many aspects,” Colby says.
Kolby Kipp Fahlsing, the founder and owner of Flutter since 2006 asked Colby Tredway if he wanted to purchase Flutter, and a week later, he did.
On July 1, Flutter was officially under the ownership of a new Colby. (Don’t worry, Kolby will be staying on as the creative director at Flutter.)
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mannequins featuring wedding dresses
Diamond Bride is on Highway 55 in Plymouth.
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a welcoming and relaxed atmosphere at flutter
Flutter caters to a higher price point, but has a welcoming and relaxed atmosphere.
“I don’t want people to think that Diamond Bride and Flutter are the same store because they’re vastly different,” Colby says. Both shops cater to traditional brides and brides who want something unique or unexpected. But, while Diamond Bride is more like a second home (more relatable, classic, and cost-effective), Flutter is more like your first apartment (contemporary, simplistic, and resides at a slightly higher price point).
Colby emphasizes that both his stores embrace brides who want to do something “different and 100 percent her, not necessarily what all of these other bridal stores and what the book tells you.” That seems to fit with his personality. He is a person who sees rules as old, tarnished mirrors–meant to broken. “I realized early on, that there’s nothing anybody in this industry could really teach me,” he says. “I have that hardwiring to be able to relate to brides and sell a wedding gown to them for their most important day.”
Colby follows trends minimally in designing dresses for Colby John, but he also stays timeless, and is most inspired by his customers. Even as the owner of three bridal businesses, he routinely takes upwards of ten appointments each week.
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woman modeling a wedding dress
Colby Tredway is often found in each of his stores, working with his team and customers.
He is mystified when other bridal store owners ask why he still takes appointments. “Ab-so-lutely!” He tells them, “I take appointments because I love working with brides. I love working with brides, that’s why I have a bridal store. I have a bridal store–and now two of them–so that I can work with more brides, which is why I have my job.” His circular logic stands up.
Of his 60-hour work weeks running three small businesses, Colby says “most of those hours are spent in my bathrobe with my iPad, [with] a bunch of purchase order and papers all over my bed.”
He is designs for the women he meets daily, and the only way to be inspired by customers is to interact with them. “I’m not designing for myself to be some big famous designer one day,” he says.
No, instead Colby is a retailer first, and designer second. He aims for his collection of about 60 dresses to have such varied styles that you might think the whole bridal design world was in the room. “I don’t always get to design what I necessarily love or am obsessed with, but I know that there’s going to be a bride that’s going to love it and be obsessed with it.”
He wants to cover all his bases–or Monopoly tiles, if you will–through his own collection, to condense the number of other designers he has to carry and work with in his stores.
“Experience and convenience are everything,” Colby says. “You have to make things fun, and exciting…and as stress-free as possible for women going through this part of their lives because it’s a stressful, expensive time, and something that they’ve–most of the time–never done before.” Because he wears the hats of designer and store owner, he can make most dresses custom or make small adjustments for brides if they want to tweak something in a dress.
Typically, Colby says, brides buy their dresses at their first appointment and often within the first four dresses they try on. Volume only makes the decision harder, he says. Brides usually purchase their dress eight months to a year-and-a-half in advance, and he recommends two to three months for alterations.
He says brides think he’s joking, but he asks them “Well, do you want somebody rushing through the alterations on your wedding gown when it’s cut in half on the table?” I am not–nor have I ever been–wedding gown shopping, but I laughed in wide-eyed agreement that no, I would not want that. Exactly.
Diamond Bride has a full-time seamstress in-house, and Colby expects to bring a similar service to Flutter with a contract seamstress, who will likely be at Flutter one day each week for fittings.
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interior of flutter with many dresses hanging up
Flutter will now be open during the week and on weekends, although the shop still prefers appointments to staff appropriately.
As a bridal gown designer and store owner, he knows a bit about relationships. “When you find your person, you know it,” he says. “But, there’s always speed bumps, and holes to fall in, and things to take care of and clean up along the way.” This is true of relationships, yes. But it’s also true of his journey–and really, everyone’s. As working people in the game of Life, we often move forward and sometimes have to back up a few spaces. We sometimes roll the dice and fail, and sometimes we get the winning hand at just the right time.
Colby now owns three valuable tiles on the Monopoly board of the Minneapolis bridal scene. What’s his next move? His little top hat is considering advancing three spaces. He expects to roll out a line of prom dresses in the Twin Cities in Spring 2021. He also has high hopes of opening a bridal store in Omaha and is exploring a sample room or outlet store for bridal dresses in the Twin Cities. Colby Tredway’s gambles have paid off so far, and I expect that he will continue winning with his next roll.
