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Members of the Bainbridge Rotary Club met for their first meeting of the New Year on Tuesday at the Kirbo Center. The guest speaker of the day was Ansley Holden, owner of Rivers and Bridge.

Holden recounted to the club how Rivers and Bridge came to be. “Funny story, I never wanted to open a retail store to begin with,” she said. Holden initially attended law school, with plans to become an entertainment lawyer in Nashville. After meeting her future husband, a farmer, she realized she may not be able to make this work, and ultimately ended up changing her major to Fashion Merchandising, and would go on to open up Rivers and Bridge in September of 2021.

When choosing between whether to open her doors in Thomasville or Bainbridge, Holden said, “Part of that is because there was a revitalization going on in downtown Bainbridge. Thomasville was already well-established; the competition was low here, and there was a lot of big changes coming here, so I opted for that.” She also cited the growing industrial park as part of her reason for choosing Bainbridge, from an investment standpoint.

Holden explained her decisions when creating Rivers and Bridge, with the store’s logo being based of her family’s dogs, and the name coming from both the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers, as well as the bridge from which Bainbridge gets it’s name.

In addition to offering men’s and women’s clothing and some children’s clothing, Rivers and Bridge also offers dog collars and tuxedo rentals. Holden hopes to offer the tuxedo service to school students during prom season; she also added that one of her future goals is to ship to all 50 states.

Following her presentation, Holden took questions from the audience.