How this Connecticut boutique became go-to place for prom season. Over 10,000 gowns are sold each year

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Atiana’s Boutique in Milford has grown into one of the go-to-places for gowns in Connecticut, selling about 10,000 dresses during prom season each year.

Now in the midst of prom season preparations, Atiana’s owner Sumit Tandon said his store has been flooded with customers. On weekends, there are between 200 and 300 shoppers in the store at one time in the 35,000 square-foot store with 53 fitting rooms.

Tandon said the store is laid out by color and size and wants his clients to have a self-service experience on the sales floor.

“At the same time, we do have staff members out there to give a hand and lend recommendations or to search up specific gowns if they have one in mind,” Tandon said. “The main thing that I want is clients to have an ease of navigating through the store.”

Tandon, 45, said other retailers’ group everything by vendor which makes it harder to look for a dress.

“They don’t know a specific vendor. They don’t know a specific style. They just know that they want to dress and they have a vision in mind. When they come in, we allow them to shop through the racks to see if what we carry fits their vision,” Tandon said.

Atiana’s Boutique has a selection of more than 15,000 gowns in the store. The staff typically suggests the client choose six to try on and go from there.

Tandon said he grew up in the boutique business. His parents started their business in New York in 1984 and also had locations in New Jersey.

“From a young age, I was interested in the business aspect itself. I’ve grown up being an entrepreneur and working. In my teenage years, I left my parents to work in big box retail, and I was a general manager for about 10 years. When my wife was expecting my daughter, we decided that we need to have a better Plan B than working for someone else.”

Tandon took over the business 19 years ago and brought Atiana’s Boutique to Connecticut with his first location at the Connecticut Post Mall. That location was 2,000 square feet with three fitting rooms. Atiana’s also expanded to stores at malls in Stamford and Trumbull as well as out-of-state locations. Tandon consolidated into the current and only location in 2012 at 1571 Boston Post Road in Milford.

“We realized our bread and butter was always Milford as opposed to making a bunch of satellite stores,” Tandon said. “We decided to make Milford our go-to home and a much larger square footage and built off of that.

“Coming from the big box (retail) mentality, I always had the mentality of stack it high and watch it fly. That came into the dress angle because your typical bridal shop or prom dress store is very small in size, not a lot of variety, only has one size of every dress, and there’s no backlist for the clients that are coming in, whether there are two or 20. There should be options,” he said.

Tandon said Atiana’s has multiple dresses in multiple sizes and caters to clients sized 00 to 32.

“Over the years, we’ve always tried to expand and expand and expand. I think around 2016 is when everything really took off for us though. After that year, when we took over our larger square footage in Milford, it just really made the difference for us because we had room to spread our gowns out, allow clients not to be stacked on top of each other and have the comfort of a shopping experience,” Tandon said.

Tandon pointed to the closure of Cooper’s Dress Shop in Orange around that time, which has been the go-to spot for more than 50 years. He said Atiana’s has filled that void.

Tandon said during non-peak time he employs 15 to 20 part-time and full-time employees. On a Saturday during peak prom time, the number of staff expands to as many as 53. He added the parking is at a premium on the weekends. After prom season, wedding season starts to pick up.

“Our building is big and our parking lot is not as accommodating. We have clients who will often times park in surrounding lots. But once they are in the building, it’s usually pretty smooth sailing,” Tandon said. “Our staff does a fantastic job of maneuvering through any lines that may potentially build up. And part of us having clients only take six at a time allows us to cycle through the fitting rooms pretty quickly. And we do have 53 fitting rooms, so it makes it very easy to kind of cycle through a lot of people in a short span of time.”

Tandon said weekends are packed at the store and bring in out-of-state customers from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont in addition to in-state clients.

“Most of our Connecticut faithful have now gotten the whiff that weekends get pretty interesting in there, so they try and come midweek just to make their lives easier because obviously it does become a lot when you have 200, 300 girls in the store at one time shopping.”

“We welcome everyone,” he added. “We appreciate the Connecticut residents for making us the No. 1 prom destination in the state for many years and many more years to come.”

Atiana’s Boutique also has a registry and a website database that has “pretty much every school in the United States loaded in it.” Tandon said the company uses the system and will not sell the same dress in the same color to that school.

“If a designer cuts a certain style in 10 colors, obviously you could have 10 different girls wearing that dress just in all different colors. The biggest thing is to try to protect that level of uniqueness. So that dress and that color we won’t duplicate in our point of sales system even blocks those sales, so it won’t allow us to make that mistake to do it,” Tandon said.

Tandon said the most popular brand he sells during prom season is Sherri Hill, which has been “the prom brand standard for several years.”

“She creates a lot of edgy looks that do well. The structure of her gowns fits just about everybody types, so that makes a big difference. There are some gowns that won’t fit certain body types or not made well to that body type. Her gowns typically always fit the build — always fit well — and then they stand by their product, too,” Tandon said.