Working in the office of a converted service station downtown, Chi Walters, co-founder of One Good Thread LLC, opens a cardboard box as if it’s a treasure chest. She gasps and sighs with delight as she examines the pretty contents, one dainty little item at a time.

The treasure is a newly arrived collection of samples from Persnickety, a designer of children’s clothing, and Chi and her husband and business partner Trevor Walters are anxious to place an order with Persnickety for One Good Thread’s spring inventory.

“This is the best part of the job,” Chi says as she notes the fresh colors and details in the sample box. 

One Good Thread is stitching its name in the niche market of online children clothing boutiques.

It’s approaching 60,000 fans on Facebook, which is its main marketing venue, driving customers to its website.

More than 98 percent of One Good Thread’s sales are shipped out of state.

“We’re known, just not known locally,” Trevor says.

The couple plan to make One Good Thread more visible here when they settle into their recently acquired building at 806 W. Third. They hope to open a retail shop in the front portion of the building this year.

For now, though, the 5,400-square-foot brick structure is One Good Thread’s warehouse and distribution center.

One Good Thread primarily sells stylish, age-appropriate clothing for girls ranging in age from infant to early teens.

Within that niche, its strongest sales are in clothes for toddlers to 8 year olds, Trevor says.

 “We started with boys and girls clothes, but families in our market don’t spend as much money on boys as on girls,” he says.

One Good Thread’s current stock includes lots of charming dresses with colorful prints, unique patterns, and pretty frills. To complete the outfits, the “e-boutique” also sells girlie hats and bands, cute tights and leggings, adorable shoes, and other bold and flowery accessories.

Prices for dresses typically range from $59 to $160. Orders average $80 to $120, and daily sales often top 200 orders, Trevor says.

Because production of each item is limited, their resale value can hold up well, Chi says.

While One Good Thread isn’t in the resale market, Chi says she’s seen girls shoes on eBay priced at or above One Good Thread’s original price for them when they were new.

In addition to the owners, One Good Thread has one full-time employee, four part-time employees, and soon will bring on another full-time employee, Trevor says.

In the coming year, he says, One Good Thread “could easily create 10 jobs.”

Chi says she got the idea to start the business when she began to see there was room to compete in the online boutique niche about the time she started buying clothes online for her daughter, who now is 6 years old.

She says customer service was difficult to nonexistent at some of those automated sites.

Chi had extensive experience with online selling, earning eBay’s “PowerSeller” designation.

“I’ve always liked sales, and I was very comfortable with just selling online,” she says, adding, “Once we had a girl, I was always buying adorable things online.”

Trevor, who was a server at Clinkerdagger restaurant just north of downtown, encouraged Chi to make her own mark in the online-boutique niche.

“I gave Chi a business plan template, and over the course of six months, she had a plan,” he says.

With mentoring and counsel from Rick Thorpe, a business adviser with the Spokane office of the Washington Small Business Development Center, the couple put the plan into play.

After several banks declined their loan applications, the couple used their savings to develop a website and buy inventory. They launched the onegoodthread.com website in October 2010.

“We started with one clothing line and two coats,” Trevor says.

The One Good Thread website had almost no traffic until Utah-based clothing designer Persnickety linked its website to One Good Thread’s site in the spring of 2011.

“You couldn’t find us through Google for four months, but we ended up having a pretty good year,” says Trevor, who counts 2011 as One Good Thread’s first full year.

The business, now entering its fourth full year in operation, saw a year-over-year growth rate of 400 percent in 2012, followed by more than 85 percent growth on top of that last year, the owners say.

Chi says One Good Thread has maintained a collegial relationship with Persnickety, because both are family-run companies that have had similar growth rates.

Today, One Good Thread’s sales account for about 10 percent of Persnickety’s total production. Trevor says One Good Thread likely is one of Persnickety’s top three sellers.

He also claims One Good Thread is the one of the largest, if not the largest, distributor for at least five other designers. In all, it sells from nearly 30 other designers.

 “We have good working relationships with the designers, and we’re always bringing new ones on,” Trevor says.

Initially, the couple ran One Good Thread out of an 800-square-foot office in the basement of their home on the lower South Hill. By February 2012, business had grown to the point that Trevor quit the restaurant to devote more time to One Good Thread.

Chi says, “At the time he took the leap of faith, we had no idea that we would get to this level as fast as we did.”

Now, One Good Thread is training a team to take on some day-to-day management responsibilities “so Chi and I can get back to growing the business,” Trevor says. “I still think we’re in the infancy stage of growth.”