Violeta Gavrilovich greets everyone who walks through the door of her hat and shoe store along Denver’s 16th Street Mall.
“Anything you need, dear, anything you need help with at all,” she repeats with a wave.
It’s an effort to impart the “Aloha spirit.” She and her husband previously operated the store in Hawaii.
“Thank you, thank you,” she says when customers leave, regardless of whether they bought anything.
But behind the go-to phrases, there’s anxiety. Violeta Gavrilovich looks worried when the door swings open and relieved when shoppers leave.
Every week, she said, people rob Aloha Hat & Sole. She said vagrants along the downtown pedestrian mall watch the store and learn her routines and those of her staff, then run in and grab a stack of Stetsons that could be worth thousands.
“It’s like a horror movie,” Violeta Gavrilovich said. “How is this safe? And this is your main street?”
It’s not like Front Street in Lahaina on the island of Maui, where Aloha found success before the wildfires of August 2023 destroyed its building, along with much of the town.
And nothing has been the same since March, when Gavrilovich’s husband Branimir died unexpectedly just weeks after the pair opened the local shop at the corner of 16th and California, leaving her to navigate life with her daughters in a new city.
One of Branimir’s final acts was chasing a thief out the doors.
“You see the bright future and the potential, but then you look at reality and it all starts crashing,” she said. “You live in fear.”
‘Together, we balanced ourselves perfectly’
Violeta and Brana met 15 years ago through a mutual friend. She was living in Chicago, Illinois, and he in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was of Serbian descent and she grew up in the former Yugoslavia. The first months of their relationship were filled with phone calls in between work shifts and breaks.
In 2010, they moved to Maui, where Brana’s mom lived. The couple initially opened Aloha as a kiosk in downtown Lahaina. It was a lifelong goal of Brana’s, who was a pop culture savant and wore square Cazal glasses.
The initial store was a hobby shop of sorts, slinging baseball caps and local handmade knickknacks. It wasn’t until later that the couple added high-end hats and shoes.
“I had experience managing,” Violeta said. “Brana said I brought discipline and organization. Brana had the ideas and that creative side. Together, we balanced ourselves perfectly.”
The couple upgraded to a corner unit on Front Street in Lahaina in 2014, later adding another store in Wailea, an area that she described as Maui’s Cherry Creek. They had their daughters, Mila and Anja, in 2013 and 2015.
“Nothing can ever compare to that,” she said of that time. “Our kids were raised in those stores.”
‘Everything looked like a cemetery’
In mid-2023, things felt back to normal as tourists returned after the pandemic.
But then came the flames that swept through Lahaina.
“(Brana) went to check the store, and he saw the disaster,” she said. “Everybody still had hope, but the entire city burned. No sirens, no communication, no nothing. We just were cut off and didn’t realize everything burned down.”
The fire killed 102 people, burned 2,200 buildings and caused $5.5 billion in damage.
The Gavriloviches lived in the middle of the island, so their home was spared. Employees and friends stayed with them for months.
“We helped each other, and that was the beautiful thing about the Aloha spirit,” she said. “But everything looked like a cemetery.”
Tourism dropped again after the fires. The Wailea store closed a short time later.
“I’m still dealing with all of that, still dealing with insurance claims,” Violeta said.
‘This is what we’ve always talked about’
Nikola Jokic brought Denver its first NBA championship in 2023.
A year later, he helped bring the Gavriloviches to the city.
In the spring of 2024, still dealing with the wildfire fallout, Violeta traveled to Denver to see her best friend, who lives in Boston. Denver was a natural middle ground, and Violeta also wanted to watch her fellow countryman from Serbia, who notched a triple-double in a six-point victory against the Celtics.
During the visit, Violeta walked along the 16th Street Mall. The corridor was in the thick of three-and-a-half years of construction, which only recently wrapped up. Scaffolding, ramps, cones and fences lined the area, making it difficult to navigate and tell what was open.
But she saw potential.
“I called Brana and said, ‘This is what we’ve always talked about.’ Restaurants, coffee shops, sitting outside,” she recalled. “In Belgrade, we have this beautiful pedestrian street. It is what I dream this street will become.”
A “for rent” sign on the corner unit at 1600 California St. caught her eye. She said it’s a similar setup to the original Lahaina Aloha.
“When you lose something,” she said, “you’re always trying to replace it.”
She and her husband decided to move their family and business to Denver.
“(Brana) was always dreaming that we would sit in the car together and watch the sunrise,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “We were very happy. He said this was the right decision, that we were going to have a good life here.”
The couple signed a five-year lease for 1,100 square feet of space in November 2024 and planned an early 2025 opening. Brana stayed to start building out the store while Violeta and their daughters returned to Maui to finish the school semester.
But Brana started to run into headwinds dealing with the city.
The couple’s unit had once been a Great Clips hair salon, so Denver considered the hat store a change in use, which meant more plans and reviews were needed. In a Feb. 13 email to a staffer in Denver’s economic development office, Brana pleaded for help and said he’d also spent $20,000 on a sign — “way above a normal budget for a small business” — that would comply with Denver’s requirements.
“When you are a small business, you cannot just take expenses for 8 months+ with no income, you need to start selling right away to keep afloat,” Brana wrote in a Feb. 13 email to a CPD project manager. “We need to focus our limited capital on buying inventory and paying rent so we can make sales to continue to be in business.
“The barrier to entry must be simpler and easier to understand if 16th Street Mall is to get refilled and become bustling again,” he continued. “Right now, that is not happening.”
The Gavriloviches, then both in Denver, finally got the store open later that month. Not used to the climate, both continually got colds during those first few months, Violeta said.
So when Brana contracted strep throat, they didn’t think much of it.
After a “terrible” sales call on a Friday afternoon, though, the stress started to pile up. The next day, Brana was working at the store, spending 45 minutes with a single patron, Violeta said.
But this wasn’t a paying customer. When Brana turned his head, the man grabbed a pile of hats off the center table and ran out the door, Violeta said. Brana chased after him.
“He was so nice, just always trying to help,” Violeta said of Brana. “It’s not like we ever had that level of disrespect before.”
While cleaning the store the next day, Violeta said, she noticed Brana’s face looked gray. She urged him to go home and rest.
“But he said, ‘Who cares? For months we paid rent and we couldn’t open,’” she recalled.
Days later, Brana was rushed to the hospital. He had sepsis, went into a coma and died March 3, a day before his 50th birthday.
“You don’t see the bigger picture at that moment. You’re not making money so you’re just focused on the business,” Violeta said. “But now it all seems so stupid. Everything is replaceable, except life.”
“He never was sick (before),” she continued. “But I’m sure the stress added to it.”
Aloha operates in a building owned by Denver-based Gart Properties. Derek Henry, the company’s director of leasing, said that Brana made him cry one of the first times the two met, speaking about what he and Violeta had been through.
Henry said Gart offered to void Aloha’s lease after Brana’s death, knowing he was the driver of the business.
“There are plenty of people who would’ve taken the landlord’s offer to tear the lease in half and do something else,” Henry said. “But she said, ‘Absolutely not. This was Brana’s vision, this was Brana’s dream. And I’m going to honor this.’”
“It speaks to her and her determination,” he added. “It speaks to her love for Brana.”
‘It’s not been what we expected’
Things haven’t gotten easier since.
The store shut down for months after Brana died before reopening in May. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston came and later mentioned Violeta and the business near the end of his State of the City address in July.
“Violeta persevered because she remembered the dream that brought her here, and she still believed it was possible: The dream of a city that welcomes you, that helps you build your own business on a street that’s safe next to great public transit. … It’s the dream we all still want,” Johnston said.
In the months after that, Violeta said, business was good. The Colorado Convention Center attracted tourists, which she said account for a majority of Aloha’s business. Locals also came downtown to see the redone 16th Street Mall.
But recently, she said, it’s been a struggle, mainly because of homelessness and theft.
She’s had people scream, urinate and defecate in front of her store. Robberies, she said, have been a weekly occurrence. In the summer, she would bring her kids into the shop. But now, they aren’t allowed.
“We’re scared. How long will this go?” she asked in a November interview. “Yeah, it’s challenging. The mayor came in and helped, but it’s not been what we expected.”
She’s called the police but said they “just write reports.” When asked if she’d get her own private security, she sounded hopeless.
“Yeah, but who can afford them? Target has them and they get robbed every day,” Violeta said, referring to her neighbor. “All these businesses are suffering because of 20 idiots.”
Last week, Violeta said she’d made a change. Aloha’s doors now remain locked, even during business hours. When a customer approaches the door, she or a staffer lets them in with a remote.
“I’m sure it’s better than it was,” she said of the 16th Street Mall. “But it’s still not a shoppable area.”
She’s also learning how to run the business by herself. The majority of the day-to-day responsibilities had fallen on Brana’s shoulders. Her job, she said, was making sure the bills were paid on time.
“Now I’m chef, now I’m helping the kids, now I do HR and payroll and marketing,” she said. “I don’t even know what I am anymore.
“I just keep thinking how unpredictable my life is,” she continued. “If the fire didn’t happen, we never would’ve moved.”
Correction: This story has been updated to better reflect what the original Aloha sold.
Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.
Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.
