She Lets Her Creative Side Shine at Her Business

Former graphic designer now in charge of her own specialty store in Syracuse, Metro Home Style

By Margaret McCormick

When she was in high school and college, Linda O’Boyle wanted to become a graphic designer.

After graduating from Mohawk Valley Community College, she did just that, designing brochures, publications and promotional materials for Lockheed Martin and later for environmental engineering firm Blasland, Bouck & Lee.

“I loved the creative side,’’ O’Boyle said. “I didn’t like the corporate.’’

While she was at Blasland, O’Boyle flexed her creative and entrepreneurial muscles with a small business, Covent Garden Antiques.

She rented booths at several multi-vendor dealer shops and offered secondhand furniture and home décor items that she painted and reimagined for resale.

“It was fun to go out and find the stuff and redo it and repurpose it. But it took a lot of time,’’ O’Boyle said of her side hustle. “It was hard to find things that were affordable to re-do and hard to find the time to do that. But I loved it.’’

She did it for many years, while balancing the demands of her full-time job.

Then she embarked on her own retail venture, Metro Home Style, a lifestyle boutique and gift shop in Syracuse. It opened in the Regional Market Commons in 2006 and relocated to North Clinton Street, in the Franklin Square neighborhood, in 2011. It’s in the same building as Spaghetti Warehouse.

O’Boyle said she always felt drawn to locally owned retail shops — for the atmosphere, the thoughtfully curated merchandise and the opportunity to talk to shopkeepers. That’s why she decided to open her own business.

“I just always liked that environment and I love business,” she said. “When traveling or even when I was local, I’d always go to small indie shops. I liked the whole feeling and I wanted to create that. The neat thing about indie retail is there can be five gift shops in town and they’re all different from each other.’’

According to Dun & Bradstreet, the gift-novelty-souvenir store industry includes about 22,000 shops in the U.S., counting national brands like Disney, Hallmark and Spencer’s (formerly Spencer Gifts). It’s a competitive category, Dun & Bradstreet said, with traffic driven by special occasions, holidays and tourism.

Metro Home Style is a store you visit to find the perfect card or gift for a friend, family member or colleague — and maybe end up heading home with a little something for yourself. It’s small, but big on carefully selected merchandise. There are candles, linens (think colorful dish towels), home accents and décor, local food products (like Syracuse Salt, Salt City Coffee and Dutch Hill maple syrup), food books and cookbooks, market totes, purses, costume jewelry, pet gear, hand soaps and lotions and more.

When she had the opportunity to expand the store slightly into a back room, O’Boyle took a gamble on giving space to greeting cards, stationery, notebooks, journals, pens and pencils and stickers. It paid off: Paper goods are her biggest sellers, along with gourmet food items.

O’Boyle, 58, is the sole proprietor and employee but brings in reinforcements — and plenty of new merchandise — for the busy holiday season. Family members help behind the scenes, on the floor and with complimentary gift wrapping, which is available with all purchases at all times of year. O’Boyle’s husband creates and serves shoppers a holiday drink (with or without alcohol).

The store might be best known for its customer service. O’Boyle travels to trade shows a couple times a year and uses social media, primarily Facebook and Instagram, to ask her customers what they’d like to see in the store. When the store is closed and she’s away at a retail conference, as she was in late July, the business owner offers online shopping deals and promotions. She recently introduced “Markdown Mondays’’ on social media, spotlighting a different discounted item each week.

Rea Carver met O’Boyle and got to know Metro Home Style more than a decade ago at the annual Holiday Shoppes fall fundraiser sponsored by the Junior League of Syracuse. She’s been a regular customer at the store since then.

What keeps her coming back?

“A little of everything,” Carver said. “It’s the attention to detail and the things she brings in. To me, it’s stuff I can’t really get anywhere else. Everything is quality. It’s the little touches, the way she wraps everything. I just love the atmosphere. And I think she’s the perfect person to do this kind of work. It’s nice to know I can walk in and say, ‘I need this hostess gift in an hour. What can you do?’ She takes care of it.’’

COVID-19 disrupted the retail world. But O’Boyle navigated the challenges and said the pandemic had “hidden benefits.’’ It caused her to focus more on the store’s website and to put more merchandise on there. Customers were encouraged to shop the website and take advantage of curbside pickup. To this day, customers can order online and arrange for in-store pickup — a wagon at the front of the store holds orders labeled with customer names.

“I have amazing customers,’’ O’Boyle said. “I have customers who have been with me since day one at the market store. Being the only employee, you get to know the customers. Everything I do is about ‘what would my customer want?’ The store exists for them.’’

The pandemic also nudged her to make more and better use of social media — to show people not only what’s new in the store or promote a sale, but to show people what’s happening in the Franklin Square neighborhood and in Syracuse in general.

In her leisure time, O’Boyle likes to relax at her family’s cottage on Oneida Lake and travel with her husband, Tim. They’re history buffs and work in visits to historic cemeteries on their trips. She also likes to help Tim with social media for his business, gravesite maintenance and repair provider With All Respect Due.

O’Boyle said she has no plans to retire. She likes her job too much.

“I love pretty much every aspect of it. I love the buying. I like the social media,” she said. “I like the merchandising. I love the customers who have become friends.’’

For more information on Metro Home Style, visit www.metrohomestyle.net.