Rehoboth’s Monograms Unlimited set to close

After nearly 40 years in business, Monograms Unlimited in Rehoboth Beach is closing its doors.

Owner Betty Ann "Bitsy" Cochran said she plans to retire and is closing the store Sunday, Feb. 4. Cochran said the closing date coincides with the Lewes Polar Bear Plunge, her biggest contract event.

"I'm going out with the Plunge," she said. "It's time to look at life differently. It's time."

The plunge is a special event for Cochran; she has made embroidered towels for the event for 20 years. The first year, Cochran said, she did 100 towels. Now it's more than 800.

Cochran said once the store closes, she intends to travel with her mother, Jean, who worked with Bitsy for many years and with whom she owns summer rental properties.

"There's properties to take care of. We want to travel. There's just a lot of other interests that I want to pursue that you don't get the time to do when you run your own business," Cochran said.

Monograms Unlimited got its start in 1979, run out of a little cottage behind the Wooden Indian on Baltimore Avenue. Cochran became owner in 1981 and then in 1994 moved the store to 102 N. First St.

"I always liked to do hand embroidering," Cochran said. "When I finished college, I was needing a part-time job because I was going to backpack Europe in the spring. So I got this part time job. My mother insisted I go talk to this lady, she had just opened an embroidery shop down by where Dogfish Head is now."

Cochran asked if the woman needed help. "And she did," Cochran recalled. "I started to learn how to embroider on the machine. I went to Europe for three months, came back, and knew that's what I wanted to do."

Monograms Unlimited has done embroidery on everything: shirts, hats and later Vera Bradley handbags. When asked how her customers are taking the news that she plans to close, Cochran said, "Not very well. They're begging me to stay."

Cochran continued, "Sadly, it's a service that is going to be lost in this town. I think people are sadly going to be missing the business. I tried to find buyers, but I don't think anybody wanted to work as long as I do, the hours I put in. It's a lot. I run it myself."

Cochran does all the embroidering work herself, running three machines and doing both contract and walk-in business.

"I don't sit down," she said. "One machine is running the daily stuff; I run the polar bear towels on one machine and the other machine is running the restaurant and corporate shirts I do. There's a lot of running between machines."

For many years, Monograms Unlimited was one of the few businesses that stayed open year-round. Cochran said more businesses staying open in the off-season is a sign of a town that has changed a great deal over the years.

"It's the growth and the development and the traffic. It's just not the same as when I grew up," she said. "It's not the same hometown feeling. But we were lucky enough to experience it. The beach and the Boardwalk were our playgrounds. We used to ice skate on the lake. Everything's changed. It's just different," she said.

Cochran is born-and-raised Rehoboth, devoting herself to the town through more than just her business. In 2010, Cochran received Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce's prestigious Mae Hall-McCabe Award for community service, which included her service as president of the chamber board, founder of the group Citizens For A Better Rehoboth and assisting Rehoboth Beach Railroad Preservation Society. To protest trees being cut down on Rehoboth Avenue, Cochran once climbed up a trunk and refused to leave. She ran for city commissioner in 1994 and served what she describes as "a two-term sentence."

"I did my six years when I was young and dumb," Cochran said. "Politics was different then. I was the only commissioner who was not backed by the homeowners association, so there wasn't much I could get accomplished. I was beating my head against a door. I'm glad I did it. I don't have any regrets that I did it. But six years is enough. I don't think it should be a job one stays in too long."

Still, she didn't rule out a return to politics now that her business life would not be as hectic. Maybe?

"Maybe, never," she quipped.

As this chapter of her life closes, Cochran reflected on what Monograms Unlimited has meant to her.

"Making the personal connections with so many of my customers. The kids I did 39 years ago are now coming in with their children. To know that my work will be part of their families and their legacies, I like that part of it. To be a memory in somebody's household," she said. "It's not bittersweet at all. I'm fully ready to try a new adventure.”