When Shannon Arick was just a teenager, she would go junk yarding and thrifting with her step-father, John.
Years later, she took those memories and turned them into a passion for antiquing, which took her around the world through the U.S. Army, before she eventually settled down in West Point.
“Mostly, I went junk yarding with my dad,” Arick said. “I would go to antique stores, thrift stores, junk stores and find the beauty in things like old tools. One of my favorites was completely and totally damaged in a house fire and was an old Ford stamp tool from World War II.”
Arick bought Bits N Pieces, an antique store at 646 Commerce St., in 2020, taking that passion for antiquing and turning it into a business. Now, she has won the Mississippi Rural Small Business of the Year award from the Small Business Administration.
Bits N Pieces started in West Point in 1973 as a classic antique store with everything from typewriters to fine dining sets.
Since purchasing the business from former owner Connie Hudson, Arick has spent most of that time renovating the upstairs section of the store to create space for merchandise, reorganizing the vendors and trying to find more local merchants to display their goods in Bits N Pieces.
“It’s expansion, not building wise, but … giving more and more people the opportunity to either hone their own hobby here, or actually to make this into a business for themselves,” Arick said.
Before turning her passion into a business, she spent her free time thrifting and antiquing during three foreign deployments in the Army – where she served as a sergeant first class and a diesel mechanic.
She completed basic training in 1990 and joined the reserves out of Fort Bliss, Texas, deploying on her first overseas assignment to South Korea in 1997. While there, she found rare items made of jade, stone and metal, but what really caught her eye was the fabrics and textiles with colorful patterns for furniture.
Later, when deployed in Germany and Iraq, respectively, in 2005 and 2006, she again used her free time to explore antique shops.
“Because I traveled a lot, every time the Army would move me, we would find more places to go with other antiques,” Arick said. “Not necessarily just antiques; I also collected comic books as a kid and an adult. We would go to yard sales and find old furniture that had layer upon layer … of paint, take it home, strip the paint, sand it, and then we would actually flip it to other antique stores.”
Her favorite find? A rare wedding dress at a shop in Qatar.
“It looks absolutely nothing like any wedding dress that you can see in the Western world,” Arick said. “It was made for a young woman who was supposed to get married, but then accidentally died. It’s bad luck or bad omen, whatever it was, so it was in this store displayed with everything else. I paid like $20 bucks for it, and I still have it at home.”
In 2008, Arick left the Army and completed a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Austin Peay State University before moving to West Point in 2011 to work for Navistar as a military contractor.
She then went on to work at the Yokohama Tire plant as an engineer from 2015 to 2020 before she was furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic. She then inquired about buying Bits N Pieces from the former owner, Connie Hudson.
After a few days of mulling it all over, she closed the deal in August. Her husband, Doug, convinced her to go for it.
Almost three years later, Arick said she felt shocked just to receive the SBA award, but hopes to continue improving the shop and generating more business.
“I was really grateful that I was put in for the award,” Arick said. “Look at everything that we’ve done. I can’t just say, ‘Oh, no, we haven’t done that much’ over two and a half years, we have really done a lot. It puts into perspective that I really am doing what I didn’t recognize, that I really am doing new things for our community.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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