Kevin Hutnick’s mom always wanted him to be a State Farm agent, but he and his family ended up owning the Valparaiso Once Upon a Child instead.
“I was looking for a career change, and my mom was saying, ‘Hey, you need to become a State Farm agent.’ And I'm like, ‘Look, I don't want to be a State Farm agent. It doesn't sound fun at all.’ Well, she just kept on me and kept on me and kept on me. And finally, she said, ‘Hey, I got you set up. Go down to Indianapolis,’” he said.
Hutnick was reluctant to go down at first, but this would be the trip that offered him the career change he was looking for, just not in the way he was expecting.
As he was headed down I-65, about 40 minutes away from Indianapolis, a commercial came on the radio for Once Upon a Child. Hutnick had heard of the store since he once worked close to the one in Highland, but he did not realize it was a chain. He was impressed, though, with the large number of customers he saw at the store each day.
“I just thought it was a lady with a good idea,” he said. “I couldn't believe how mad people got about that place. They were just always there. I mean, it was just like Grand Central Station with people walking in and out of there.”
Upon hearing that commercial, Hutnick knew what he had to do. As a natural-born entrepreneur, he went to his mother and brother, Chris, and told them they had to figure out what all the hype was about. Then in 2009, they flew to Minnesota for training and opened the Once Upon a Child in Valparaiso.
“When I went to do the State Farm Convention, I just heard it on the radio, so I came back. I told Chris, ‘I don't know what it is. We don't have any kids. We don't know anything about baby clothes or equipment, but we need to look into this,’” he said.
Despite knowing very little about children’s clothing, Hutnick and his family were eager to make it work. They were all there five to six days a week doing everything they could to have a successful business and learn all the ins and outs of kids' apparel.
“It quickly turned into something great. There are 350 stores, and they told us that we would have to do 450,000 sales to stay afloat for it to make sense in the first year. That just seemed like such a crazy high number,” he said. “We were scared, but we had a great year. I think our first year we did close to 700,000 sales. It was awesome. This'll be our 11th or 12th year here. It's been great.”
However, in 2018, tragedy struck, and the plaza Once Upon a Child was located in caught fire, causing smoke damage to all the products in the store. As a result, the store was forced to close without a new home or future plan in sight.
Hutnick and his family did not let this set them back, though. Their passion for the store stayed strong, and they searched the area far and wide to give Once Upon a Child the fairytale ending it deserved.
It was a connection with an old friend that sealed the deal on a new location. He is friends with the owner of Viking Chili Bowl Family Restaurant, Thomas Traycoff, and this connection led to an unexpected opportunity.
While paying for his food one day, he noticed there was an organic grocery store in a plaza close by and that it would make for a perfect new home for Once Upon a Child. He asked Traycoff to let him know if the grocery store ever closed down and stated his interest in the building.
He wasn’t prepared for his friend’s response.
“He said, ‘Hey, look, they just notified us that they're moving out or they're going out of business.' I said, ‘We’ll take it.’ We moved there about a year later,” Hutnick said.
Today, they are still at the same location: 209 Morthland Drive, Suite 9, in Valparaiso, right off of Route 30.
Hutnick thanked his staff members for their hard work and perseverance during the year-long challenge. They were all extremely dedicated to the store, and many of them came back to the new location to resume their old jobs when it was established.
The fire did not just bring about a new home for the business, though. It also brought along a new venture for Hutnick: real estate. He always had a passion for the field, but never thought it would become more than just that.
“The real estate thing was just started as a hobby, and it was to sell a house a year. And that's what the goal was. And if you rewind five years ago, that was the goal, so I planned that while staying at Once Upon a Child for the rest of my life,” he said.
Hutnick said while the fire was a devastating loss, he chose to look at the positives and decided to use the down time to focus on his love of selling houses. This led him to become the owner of his own real estate company, Listing Leaders.
“I just thought, ‘Hey, you know, these moms trust us with their clothing and equipment and things.’ And I thought, ‘Hey, if I go take this class for $335 and go get licensed, maybe I could help somebody buy a house every once in a while. If it pays for this class to my dues every year if I sell one house, it'll pay for itself,” he said.
That goal eventually turned into 25 (soon to be 28) offices, four schools, 400 agents, and close to 2,600 transactions a year.
Hutnick continues to help at Once Upon a Child where he can and said his brother and mother are now the ones fully in charge.
Pursuing his real estate dream would never have been an option, though, if it were not for the successes of Once Upon a Child.
“I started it in 2016. We wrote the logo on a napkin and just thought, ‘Hey we'll do this and see what happens.'"