Ivoryton Inn Tea House Has a New Manager: Meet Linda Salafia

After retiring, former City of Middletown payroll supervisor Linda Salafia decided to return to her love all things crafty: jewelry, quilting, knitting, felting, sewing custom-designed handbags and baby and American Girl Doll clothing.

Her first attempts were selling online at Etsy, the popular craft selling website, but found that the platform was difficult to use, expensive, and impossible to customize.

At the same time, her future son-in law Jonathan Drosdeck decided to develop an online e-commerce platform that was much more user-friendly to people as far as managing inventory and creating a customizable store called mmerch.

To better suit the needs of Linda and other home-grown users selling handmade items, he created the subsets www.sstitch.com and www.vntge.net — marketplaces for cross-marketing.

Unlike other platforms such as eBay, and Etsy, sellers can create a custom store, and manage shipping, inventory and tax calculations all in one place. It is also very user-friendly for people who do not consider themselves computer savvy.

Linda created her store using Treasures and Traditions using the www.mmerch.com platform and found it both fun and successful.

Through the magic of craigslist and serendipity, Linda met Mark Yellin, the owner of the historic Ivoryton Inn.

She found a niche to set out on a new career far different from her 25 years of city employment and time as union vice president. On June 22, the councilwoman became the manager of The Tea House at the Ivoryton Inn and operator of the Treasures and Traditions gift shop located in the Ivoryton Inn adjacent to the Ivoryton Playhouse.

Her husband of 33 years, Tom Salafia, who retired from a 30-plus-year career as an sales associate specializing in industrial components, hopes to sell some of his reclaimed antique furniture creations there in the future.

She joins the Ivoryton Inn team lead by manager Julie Crowell, wife of retired Middletown Public School teacher and former Middletown resident Jim Crowell.

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The Tea House is at 115 Main Street, Ivoryton section of Essex.