The last few years have held a lot of change here at Footlights & we want to take a moment to reflect and update our clients on the new faces and leadership at Footlights.
By now, most of you are aware that Joy Ellis, our founder, stepped down and handed over her leadership role in the beginning of 2020 to Joe Ellis (her son) and Molly Ellis (her daughter-in-law). While this transition had been in the works for over a decade, the pandemic, global shutdowns and chain-supply issues were certainly not part of the transition plan.
With the setbacks that the COVID-19 pandemic created, we pivoted our structure of service to accommodate the change in staffing, the shutdowns and limitations. In 2021, we didn’t get to host our 30th Anniversary plans as we had been looking forward to and instead, we made the difficult decision to close down our Alexandria location permanently.
In the beginning of 2022, many of the studios we service were still running abbreviated and limited capacity routines that they had in place from 2021. At Footlights, we have been actively seeking new staff for both of our locations (Frederick & Silver Spring). We know there were many days between 2020 and the Spring of 2022 that our closures, abbreviated hours and limitations made shopping in person difficult at times for our clients. We are still working on building back up our staff to level out those limitations.
In 2022, we also celebrated our 10th Anniversary of our Silver Spring location. This milestone is a very special one for us at Footlights and we are so incredibly grateful for the constant support we’ve received from our downtown community in Silver Spring. We look forward to many more years at both our Frederick and Silver Spring locations.
Our goal for 2023 is to expand our hours of operation at both locations and have the full force of staff as we had prior to the pandemic. This is something that we’ve been working towards and assure you is still a priority for Footlights. Once we can make those changes, we will update our newsletter subscribers and social media channels.
While we’re still actively seeking associates, we had new faces and leadership growth amongst our management team this year.
Many of our Frederick clients have gotten to know Ezzie for over a decade in her various roles of management at Frederick. In the summer of 2022, she officially took on the role as Boutique Director. She now oversees the front-end operations of Footlights to continue bringing you our professional services from all departments and points of contact across the entire company.
In the Winter of 2021, Miranda joined us in our Silver Spring location to train and take over our Boutique Manager position. Since the start of 2022, she has handled all daily operations at our Silver Spring location.
In the Spring of 2022, Kim joined us in our Frederick location and was promoted to Associate Boutique Manager in the Summer. She now oversees the daily front-end operations of our Frederick location.
Kailey joined us in the Summer of 2022 to take on our Distribution Administrator position. Kailey now handles all distribution and our online order fulfillment.
You can get to know more about our employees, including our associates by visiting this link.
While Joe and Molly do miss the regular recordings for Dancers Candy videos and updates, we hope that will return in the next few years! In the meantime, they are busy with the re-growth of Footlights and back-end operations to keep stock on the shelves, and everything else that goes into maintaining the Footlights you’ve grown to love over the years.
It’s with the consistent support of the dance & theater community that has helped us continue our abilities to serve the greater Washington, D.C. area for so many years and we’re truly grateful for your support!
If you aren’t signed up for our newsletters and updates, we invite you to do so on our website at https://www.dancefootlights.com | We share updates regarding new products, changes to our shop hours & more.
To apply to our open associate positions, please follow this link.
Happy Holidays,
The Footlights Team
