When Jude Steele, co-founder and co-principal of JudeFrances felt that her boyfriend, Derek was ready to pop the question, who better to turn to for a fabulous engagement ring design than her best friend and business partner Frances Gadbois? “It was just the natural thing to do,” says Jude about asking Frances to design her engagement ring. “No one knows me better than Frances, except for Derek of course, and since I am going to be wearing the ring for the rest of my life, I wanted it to be absolutely perfect.”
Derek agrees. When asked how he felt about Frances designing the ring, he replied, “Frances is the expert and I wouldn’t have it any other way”.
JudeFrances is truly an inspirational story about two women who had a vision, goals, determination and a few strokes of luck and managed to turn their jewelry line into a multi-million dollar company in just five short, but very busy years. Although they admit that they are as different as white and yellow gold, when Jude and Frances met at a charity dinner in 2002, they instantly knew that they would become fast friends and would be ideal business partners. The JudeFrances partnership is truly a match made in heaven. While Frances oversees operations and design for JudeFrances, Jude leads sales and marketing. Their talents are wonderfully complimentary. Their close friendship makes working together even better… “We are there for each other through thick and thin. Not a day goes by when we don’t talk.” says Jude.
So with the upcoming nuptials pending, how are Jude and Frances spending most of their time? Just as they always have… Juggling the demands of their families and careers… “It’s not always easy,” says Frances, “but making our families number one is part of our definition of success.” Next up for the dynamic duo? The JudeFrances
Bridal Collection.
JudeFrances
Kristyn Beausoleil
kristyn@judefrances.com
Tel: (949) 553-8860
Fax: (949) 553-8861
http://www.judefrances.com
Monday, June 25, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Chapter 14-Serendipity
I ASKED FRANCES AND JUDE if I could write the last chapter of their on-going success story because I knew they would never toot their own horns as much as they deserved.
The summer of 2005 has just passed and this book is almost written. So far, Jude and Frances have nearly doubled their sales each of their three short years in business. My prediction is they will continue to grow and succeed at an even brisker rate.
As you’ve heard, they are both terrific goal setters. As part of those goals, they have committed themselves to enter the next phase of JudeFrances Jewelry, which will involve developing their “brand.”
I don’t use the word “committed” lightly, because that is really what these two women are all about. Frances often uses the word “goal” for commitment. What that really means is she and Jude are committed to a specific outcome in everything they undertake. If Frances says, “I’m committed to a sales figure of $6.5 million,” that is more than a goal—it is what she and Jude will achieve. They will turn that goal into a reality by creating that which is not yet evident.
The funny thing about their success is that these two women didn’t go to college; they didn’t know much about the jewelry busi¬ness when they started; and as they’ve said several times, they still don’t have a business plan.
When I was an executive with St. John’s Knits, our corporate culture—like so many other successful businesses—was designed around setting and measuring goals. Essentially, by so doing, you create something out of nothing but a vision.
All of this has been written about in business schools since there were business schools, but the key, that is sometimes over¬looked, is after you are committed, you must get all of your people on board, sharing the same vision.
That is why I went to work for JudeFrances: I shared their vision, as do all their employees, friends, and family. That is because the one talent these ladies possess is their ability to “line up the universe behind them.”
In other words, they have a gift for energizing others around them with their vision and their dreams. Once others see it, under¬stand it, and embrace it, their energy comes back to them tenfold. Good people who share your vision want nothing but the best for you.
What is the key, then, to lining up the universe behind your dream? A specific commitment on your part. That is what Frances and Jude do every day. They set a goal or goals stated so specifically and believed in so strongly (before there is evidence), that no one, most importantly themselves, can misunderstand their intentions.
When you commit, or set a goal, it is not sufficient to say, “I want to be successful, or I want to be rich, or I want to be famous, or I want to be the best.” Give me specifics: How rich? How much money do you want in your bank account this time next year— exactly? A million, ten million, how much? And by what date, and what will you do “specifically” to reach that goal? It isn’t sufficient to say, “I will work hard.” How hard? In what ways? How often? Where and when?
When you see that goal clearly, as clearly as if it were already a reality, then it already is. When you share that with others, you begin to enlist a force field of good energy, which will help carry you to your outcome.
I also asked these two entrepreneurs if I could write this last chapter because it involves the next logical step in their growth— the branding of the JudeFrances name, something with which I’m very familiar.
In the marketing world, branding is everything. In order to compete effectively, your company’s name and image must be at the forefront of your potential customers minds at all times and, of course, you want that image to communicate quickly and clearly what you stand for: quality, honesty, fun, reliability, whatever.
What do you think of when you hear the words Coca Cola: tasty, fun, youth, energy? Once that image is established, then your company can branch out and create new products, not just jewelry, or at least not just 18 carat gold jewelry, but silver jewelry, maybe a line of fun women’s watches. In short, extend the reach of your brand, increasing sales and continuing on the path to steady growth. Maybe one day, you even go public, but you can’t reach any of those goals without a solid identity or brand recognition.
Enter “Shebonics.”
What in the world is Shebonics, you might be asking yourself? Shebonics is a word that was coined by a woman that Frances, Jude, and I met just a few months ago, and she is actually the reason they wrote this book.
When it became apparent to everyone earlier this year that JudeFrances had to begin to develop a brand identity, we began tossing ideas around, but in the end, as is Frances and Jude’s smart way of doing things, we decided to bring in an expert—a person who did nothing but branding.
Also, as is always their way, they wanted to talk to someone who was referred by a happy client or another successful business. When we let it be known that we were looking for a person with these kinds of credentials, we were given the name Maude Glazer (not her real name). She had literally created some of the countries best known and most loved brands ranging from retail chains to some of the Fortune 500s. In other words, she’d taken a business entity that was showing promise, had good products and/or serv¬ices, and grown them into legends—not an easy feat.
The entire experience of interviewing her turned into a scene out of an old Greta Garbo movie. I was responsible for setting up the entire thing. When I contacted her and told her what we wanted to do, she said, “Of course. Of course, that is what I do.” And then she insisted on meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills.
So far, so good. Though the Peninsula is very expensive, I fig¬ured some drinks and hors d’oeuvres would suffice; we would pick her brain for an hour and a half and that would be all we needed to perhaps take the next step. However, when she insisted that we pay her expenses, we figured, okay, yes, we can certainly pick up her air¬fare and lunch. No big deal, so I set a meeting at the Peninsula.
I was the first to arrive because the girls were in L.A. at a show. Maude wanted to meet in the bar and so I went into the Club Bar, the darkest room I’ve ever been in during daylight hours.
Feeling my way around the room on the backs of the chairs, waiting for my eyes to adjust, I finally found an empty seat and took it. Within minutes, in walks our branding expert. Scratch that. She wasn’t walking; she was making a grand entrance. Her bright orange/red hair was piled on her head in a bouffant nearly 10-inches high, which when coupled with her five-inch patent leather shoes, made her look like an Amazon. The fact that she had a full-length leopard skin coat draped over her didn’t help any, either, but the piece de resistance were her Gucci sunglasses—so dark, it would be difficult to see through them standing on La Cienega Boulevard at high noon, let alone in this cave.
With each elongated stride, her spotted coat would sway left and right, and I thought, The only thing missing is the black onyx cigarette holder complete with a six-inch long Benson & Hedges.
I stood up and said, “Hello. Are you Maude?” She said yes and before she could sit down, Jude and Frances came through the entry, spotted me, and came over.
I made the introductions and as we were about to be seated, Maude says, “Oh, dahlings, I can’t do it in here. We must go out¬side. Let’s go upstairs to the pool and the cabanas.”
Can’t do it? What is she going to do, conduct a séance?
Before we could agree, off she went, that coat swaying back and forth. Once upstairs, we saw that there were about 10 of these small tent-cabanas, all of them closed. She immediately started to open one, then another, not knowing if anyone was in them or not, until she found one to her liking.
“Here, dahlings. This one is perfect,” she directed.
Inside were four chairs, a small table, and a long chaise lounge chair, which she immediately took up a pose in, stretching herself out with one arm languishing over one arm of the chair, the other coming to her mouth with the cigarette, still with the dark glasses on.
We dutifully took up our places in the straight-back chairs, pulled out our steno pads and pens, and readied ourselves, like stu¬dents in first grade.
“Dahlings. I see this as a feminine product,” she said.
Humh, good start. It is jewelry for women.
“I think we really need to play up the feminine angle,” she continued.
Hummmh?
“You know, it’s really all about “Shebonics,” she said with a grand sweeping gesture of the cigarette.
The three of us looked at each other without saying a word, yet saying, “Huh? What in the hell is Shebonics?”
“Yes, that’s it, Shebonics. You know, when I meet new clients, what I like to do is get my head around the product, massage the thing a bit mentally, and then retreat to my cave in Phoenix. That’s what I call my penthouse. I just stay in my cave until I ‘birth’ the idea.”
Frances and I couldn’t stand it any longer, we just started cracking up. Then I looked over at Jude who was dead serious. She was scribbling down notes as if Moses had just descended from the Mount with the tablets. When we saw that, we really started laughing. Then Maude, who clearly was not finding the humor, used her long index finger and her two-inch long fire engine red nail to tug ever so slightly at her sunglasses, revealing just a hint of her eyes and a mild look of disdain.
All the way home we howled, but we hadn’t entirely given up on her. I decided we should at least call some of her references to check up on her. Maybe she was just one of those eccentric geniuses—after all, she had supposedly “made” one of the country’s most famous restaurants, among other notable achievements.
I started calling the next day. The first reference I called was the restaurant chain, speaking to one of the people in Human Resources; I asked what they thought of her.
“Well, she’s a very uh, interesting individual, isn’t she?” he said. “Has she birthed any ideas yet?” he continued, and I could have sworn I heard a small chuckle.
A few more calls with pretty much identical results convinced me to drop the Shebonics idea.
About 10 days later, we got a bill from Maude. It was for $2,500—for expenses. Little did we know that she not only wanted to meet at the Peninsula—she had stayed there—for two nights. One for us, and one for another client of hers. In addition, she’d flown first class. And then there were the honor bar charges.
The one thing we did gain from that interview was the idea to write a book. Maude had said, “You simply must write a book. That is what everyone is doing.” And so, here it is. The girls have birthed their book.
As it turned out, Frances and Jude already had the beginnings of a branding effort—the whole green apples thing. It’s small, but it’s a start. Eventually, they will add new lines of merchandise and they will grow their reputation. They will continue to go to Europe to find the fresh ideas that haven’t made it here yet and, eventually, they will go international.
Today, their line of jewelry consists of more than 350 pieces, always new, always fresh, always collectible. And from their first sale to a single Tassels store, up through being available in 29 Manheim’s stores, to today—just three years after they began in the attic above the garage—they are in more than 140 retail outlets in the U.S.
It’s hard to imagine all the changes and all the success that these two have gone through in such a short time. It just goes to show you what you can do when you just go for it.
Finally, two quick notes: Remember Brian, the manufacturer who told Frances to stick with interior design? Today, he is one of their biggest fans and, of course, is still happily producing their jewelry. In fact, they are now his biggest clients.
In addition, Jude and Frances were nominated for the Entrepreneur of The Year Award by the Orange County Business Journal, and they are asked to speak every year at the USC Marshall School of Business—not bad for two girls who never even went to college.
Update: In the spring of 2006, Frances and Jude’s business con¬tinues to boom. The girls, as imaginative as ever, came out with a whole new line of jewelry. The Silver Line launched to great suc¬cess and acceptance, and now Neiman Marcus and other upscale retailers are offering it.
Will their creativity wane? I don’t think so; I’ve seen sketches flying around the office for jewelry designed especially for men. “Hey,” Jude said, “they deserve something nice in spite of them¬selves.”
With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.
The Romans had a name for it, Vena Amoris, literally “vein of love.” The ancients believed that a vein ran directly from the heart to the third finger of the left hand. Today, because of that belief, we traditionally place the wedding band, our ring of love, on the middle finger, the ring finger, of the bride.
Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring!
In times gone by, wedding rings made of bone, hemp, or wood symbolized the endless circle and eternal nature of love and mar¬riage. Gold and silver wedding jewelry was rarely given, and then only by the wealthy. A man of riches would give his bride a ring made of these precious metals to prove that he trusted her with his treasure.
And finally, the American humorist, George Ade, once said, “If it weren’t for the presents, an elopement would be preferable.”
You know where this is leading: Jude and Frances are at it again. They’re making a move into the bridal jewelry business!
“Why not?” Jude asked Frances, after sketching a few designs.
“Why not indeed,” Frances replied, knowing that 80 percent of the jewelry business is bridal related. “We’ve been successful tapping into only 20 percent of the market. Imagine what we can do when we have a line in the 80 percent segment.”
Jude smiled. “In other words, just go for it. Right?”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
The summer of 2005 has just passed and this book is almost written. So far, Jude and Frances have nearly doubled their sales each of their three short years in business. My prediction is they will continue to grow and succeed at an even brisker rate.
As you’ve heard, they are both terrific goal setters. As part of those goals, they have committed themselves to enter the next phase of JudeFrances Jewelry, which will involve developing their “brand.”
I don’t use the word “committed” lightly, because that is really what these two women are all about. Frances often uses the word “goal” for commitment. What that really means is she and Jude are committed to a specific outcome in everything they undertake. If Frances says, “I’m committed to a sales figure of $6.5 million,” that is more than a goal—it is what she and Jude will achieve. They will turn that goal into a reality by creating that which is not yet evident.
The funny thing about their success is that these two women didn’t go to college; they didn’t know much about the jewelry busi¬ness when they started; and as they’ve said several times, they still don’t have a business plan.
When I was an executive with St. John’s Knits, our corporate culture—like so many other successful businesses—was designed around setting and measuring goals. Essentially, by so doing, you create something out of nothing but a vision.
All of this has been written about in business schools since there were business schools, but the key, that is sometimes over¬looked, is after you are committed, you must get all of your people on board, sharing the same vision.
That is why I went to work for JudeFrances: I shared their vision, as do all their employees, friends, and family. That is because the one talent these ladies possess is their ability to “line up the universe behind them.”
In other words, they have a gift for energizing others around them with their vision and their dreams. Once others see it, under¬stand it, and embrace it, their energy comes back to them tenfold. Good people who share your vision want nothing but the best for you.
What is the key, then, to lining up the universe behind your dream? A specific commitment on your part. That is what Frances and Jude do every day. They set a goal or goals stated so specifically and believed in so strongly (before there is evidence), that no one, most importantly themselves, can misunderstand their intentions.
When you commit, or set a goal, it is not sufficient to say, “I want to be successful, or I want to be rich, or I want to be famous, or I want to be the best.” Give me specifics: How rich? How much money do you want in your bank account this time next year— exactly? A million, ten million, how much? And by what date, and what will you do “specifically” to reach that goal? It isn’t sufficient to say, “I will work hard.” How hard? In what ways? How often? Where and when?
When you see that goal clearly, as clearly as if it were already a reality, then it already is. When you share that with others, you begin to enlist a force field of good energy, which will help carry you to your outcome.
I also asked these two entrepreneurs if I could write this last chapter because it involves the next logical step in their growth— the branding of the JudeFrances name, something with which I’m very familiar.
In the marketing world, branding is everything. In order to compete effectively, your company’s name and image must be at the forefront of your potential customers minds at all times and, of course, you want that image to communicate quickly and clearly what you stand for: quality, honesty, fun, reliability, whatever.
What do you think of when you hear the words Coca Cola: tasty, fun, youth, energy? Once that image is established, then your company can branch out and create new products, not just jewelry, or at least not just 18 carat gold jewelry, but silver jewelry, maybe a line of fun women’s watches. In short, extend the reach of your brand, increasing sales and continuing on the path to steady growth. Maybe one day, you even go public, but you can’t reach any of those goals without a solid identity or brand recognition.
Enter “Shebonics.”
What in the world is Shebonics, you might be asking yourself? Shebonics is a word that was coined by a woman that Frances, Jude, and I met just a few months ago, and she is actually the reason they wrote this book.
When it became apparent to everyone earlier this year that JudeFrances had to begin to develop a brand identity, we began tossing ideas around, but in the end, as is Frances and Jude’s smart way of doing things, we decided to bring in an expert—a person who did nothing but branding.
Also, as is always their way, they wanted to talk to someone who was referred by a happy client or another successful business. When we let it be known that we were looking for a person with these kinds of credentials, we were given the name Maude Glazer (not her real name). She had literally created some of the countries best known and most loved brands ranging from retail chains to some of the Fortune 500s. In other words, she’d taken a business entity that was showing promise, had good products and/or serv¬ices, and grown them into legends—not an easy feat.
The entire experience of interviewing her turned into a scene out of an old Greta Garbo movie. I was responsible for setting up the entire thing. When I contacted her and told her what we wanted to do, she said, “Of course. Of course, that is what I do.” And then she insisted on meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills.
So far, so good. Though the Peninsula is very expensive, I fig¬ured some drinks and hors d’oeuvres would suffice; we would pick her brain for an hour and a half and that would be all we needed to perhaps take the next step. However, when she insisted that we pay her expenses, we figured, okay, yes, we can certainly pick up her air¬fare and lunch. No big deal, so I set a meeting at the Peninsula.
I was the first to arrive because the girls were in L.A. at a show. Maude wanted to meet in the bar and so I went into the Club Bar, the darkest room I’ve ever been in during daylight hours.
Feeling my way around the room on the backs of the chairs, waiting for my eyes to adjust, I finally found an empty seat and took it. Within minutes, in walks our branding expert. Scratch that. She wasn’t walking; she was making a grand entrance. Her bright orange/red hair was piled on her head in a bouffant nearly 10-inches high, which when coupled with her five-inch patent leather shoes, made her look like an Amazon. The fact that she had a full-length leopard skin coat draped over her didn’t help any, either, but the piece de resistance were her Gucci sunglasses—so dark, it would be difficult to see through them standing on La Cienega Boulevard at high noon, let alone in this cave.
With each elongated stride, her spotted coat would sway left and right, and I thought, The only thing missing is the black onyx cigarette holder complete with a six-inch long Benson & Hedges.
I stood up and said, “Hello. Are you Maude?” She said yes and before she could sit down, Jude and Frances came through the entry, spotted me, and came over.
I made the introductions and as we were about to be seated, Maude says, “Oh, dahlings, I can’t do it in here. We must go out¬side. Let’s go upstairs to the pool and the cabanas.”
Can’t do it? What is she going to do, conduct a séance?
Before we could agree, off she went, that coat swaying back and forth. Once upstairs, we saw that there were about 10 of these small tent-cabanas, all of them closed. She immediately started to open one, then another, not knowing if anyone was in them or not, until she found one to her liking.
“Here, dahlings. This one is perfect,” she directed.
Inside were four chairs, a small table, and a long chaise lounge chair, which she immediately took up a pose in, stretching herself out with one arm languishing over one arm of the chair, the other coming to her mouth with the cigarette, still with the dark glasses on.
We dutifully took up our places in the straight-back chairs, pulled out our steno pads and pens, and readied ourselves, like stu¬dents in first grade.
“Dahlings. I see this as a feminine product,” she said.
Humh, good start. It is jewelry for women.
“I think we really need to play up the feminine angle,” she continued.
Hummmh?
“You know, it’s really all about “Shebonics,” she said with a grand sweeping gesture of the cigarette.
The three of us looked at each other without saying a word, yet saying, “Huh? What in the hell is Shebonics?”
“Yes, that’s it, Shebonics. You know, when I meet new clients, what I like to do is get my head around the product, massage the thing a bit mentally, and then retreat to my cave in Phoenix. That’s what I call my penthouse. I just stay in my cave until I ‘birth’ the idea.”
Frances and I couldn’t stand it any longer, we just started cracking up. Then I looked over at Jude who was dead serious. She was scribbling down notes as if Moses had just descended from the Mount with the tablets. When we saw that, we really started laughing. Then Maude, who clearly was not finding the humor, used her long index finger and her two-inch long fire engine red nail to tug ever so slightly at her sunglasses, revealing just a hint of her eyes and a mild look of disdain.
All the way home we howled, but we hadn’t entirely given up on her. I decided we should at least call some of her references to check up on her. Maybe she was just one of those eccentric geniuses—after all, she had supposedly “made” one of the country’s most famous restaurants, among other notable achievements.
I started calling the next day. The first reference I called was the restaurant chain, speaking to one of the people in Human Resources; I asked what they thought of her.
“Well, she’s a very uh, interesting individual, isn’t she?” he said. “Has she birthed any ideas yet?” he continued, and I could have sworn I heard a small chuckle.
A few more calls with pretty much identical results convinced me to drop the Shebonics idea.
About 10 days later, we got a bill from Maude. It was for $2,500—for expenses. Little did we know that she not only wanted to meet at the Peninsula—she had stayed there—for two nights. One for us, and one for another client of hers. In addition, she’d flown first class. And then there were the honor bar charges.
The one thing we did gain from that interview was the idea to write a book. Maude had said, “You simply must write a book. That is what everyone is doing.” And so, here it is. The girls have birthed their book.
As it turned out, Frances and Jude already had the beginnings of a branding effort—the whole green apples thing. It’s small, but it’s a start. Eventually, they will add new lines of merchandise and they will grow their reputation. They will continue to go to Europe to find the fresh ideas that haven’t made it here yet and, eventually, they will go international.
Today, their line of jewelry consists of more than 350 pieces, always new, always fresh, always collectible. And from their first sale to a single Tassels store, up through being available in 29 Manheim’s stores, to today—just three years after they began in the attic above the garage—they are in more than 140 retail outlets in the U.S.
It’s hard to imagine all the changes and all the success that these two have gone through in such a short time. It just goes to show you what you can do when you just go for it.
Finally, two quick notes: Remember Brian, the manufacturer who told Frances to stick with interior design? Today, he is one of their biggest fans and, of course, is still happily producing their jewelry. In fact, they are now his biggest clients.
In addition, Jude and Frances were nominated for the Entrepreneur of The Year Award by the Orange County Business Journal, and they are asked to speak every year at the USC Marshall School of Business—not bad for two girls who never even went to college.
Update: In the spring of 2006, Frances and Jude’s business con¬tinues to boom. The girls, as imaginative as ever, came out with a whole new line of jewelry. The Silver Line launched to great suc¬cess and acceptance, and now Neiman Marcus and other upscale retailers are offering it.
Will their creativity wane? I don’t think so; I’ve seen sketches flying around the office for jewelry designed especially for men. “Hey,” Jude said, “they deserve something nice in spite of them¬selves.”
With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.
The Romans had a name for it, Vena Amoris, literally “vein of love.” The ancients believed that a vein ran directly from the heart to the third finger of the left hand. Today, because of that belief, we traditionally place the wedding band, our ring of love, on the middle finger, the ring finger, of the bride.
Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring!
In times gone by, wedding rings made of bone, hemp, or wood symbolized the endless circle and eternal nature of love and mar¬riage. Gold and silver wedding jewelry was rarely given, and then only by the wealthy. A man of riches would give his bride a ring made of these precious metals to prove that he trusted her with his treasure.
And finally, the American humorist, George Ade, once said, “If it weren’t for the presents, an elopement would be preferable.”
You know where this is leading: Jude and Frances are at it again. They’re making a move into the bridal jewelry business!
“Why not?” Jude asked Frances, after sketching a few designs.
“Why not indeed,” Frances replied, knowing that 80 percent of the jewelry business is bridal related. “We’ve been successful tapping into only 20 percent of the market. Imagine what we can do when we have a line in the 80 percent segment.”
Jude smiled. “In other words, just go for it. Right?”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
Chapter 13-Heels of Success
FOLLOWING RIGHT ON THE HEELS of the Venetian show and Guido incident, we set up at the JCK Show at the Sands Convention Center, near the Venetian.
The only problem was that Jude didn’t actually book us a booth; she couldn’t because there was a 10-year waiting list. Instead, she convinced a friend who had a large booth to share. We didn’t actually share the 20-foot space; he gave us a table about two-feet square at the back of his booth, for which we were very grateful.
His extensive array of gorgeous jewelry dwarfed our line, but we were happy. Since sharing a booth was strictly forbidden, we were flying under the radar—no signs, no flyers, and no promo¬tions. We just kept a low profile. Yet, even at that, hidden in the back, without even a sign, we grossed a half million dollars in sales.
The Manheim’s people tempered the elation over our success at the Sands when they asked us what our Fall line would look like. Did we have anything new?
It was nearly the end of July. And much like the first time we shipped to Doris, we realized she still hadn’t told us what to send.
In standard industry practice, the buyer dictates which items you are offering that she wants in the stores, using your line sheets and phone conversations to arrive at a final decision—hopefully more than two weeks prior to shipping.
Also standard practice, all products in the Fall line must arrive at Manheim’s no later than August 15th for sale in September. All I could think of was Marley, our fairy godmother in Shipping, and all Jude could think about was the possibility of missing an entire season. Neither of us was looking forward to arriving in Orange County the next day looking forward to the prospects of more 18 hour days readying the line for shipment.
I called Doris when we got back to our room and told her that all the buyers at JCK loved our line and we’d done very well, but just what did she want us to send her for this next shipment?
As always, in her scattered, but nevertheless effective style, she simply said, “Do what you think is best, but I must have $30,000 worth for each store by August 15th. And this time, use Fed Ex.”
Coming off a $500,000 showing at the Sands, Doris had just ordered another $150,000 worth of merchandise to our sales. We were ecstatic, but there was still the very difficult job of filling the orders.
It was time to hire another person. We were desperate for help in operations and I wound up finding exactly what we was looking for in my own backyard literally.
Cleopatra, or Cleo as we call her, was living in our garage apartment. She is an astounding young musician who was in the United States on a full scholarship to USC and playing for the Orange County Symphony Orchestra.
My husband, who sits on the board, was attending a Symphony meeting when the director mentioned that a student needed a place to stay while studying music. Rich volunteered our home and Cleo moved in the next day. Cleo continued her studies and became a wonderful addition to our family and a second daughter to me.
When I knew I needed help, I wanted someone I could trust and had to look no further than Cleo. When I asked if she would join us, she was thrilled with the opportunity and came to work immediately.
About a year and half later I realized that Cleo, Lorraine, Jude and I could not do all that was required to run our growing busi¬ness. Everyone was working at maximum levels and again it was time to hire another person. Cleo’s work ethic mirrored ours, so it was natural for me to ask her if she knew anyone who was looking for work. As it turned out, Cleo’s brother, who is also an out¬standing musician, had a girlfriend who was looking for work. Upon meeting Camillia, I knew immediately that she too would be the perfect fit for our business. She started in September of 2004.
Rounding out our team is Ioana, also a friend of Cleo and Camillia’s who started that same December. She has been the per¬fect fit for us. Finally, Jude and I had a brilliant team assembled to take our growing company to the next level.
At this point, we had Loraine handling accounting, Barbara handling national sales, Cleo, Camilla and Iona—an eclectic, cre¬ative, and efficient team that was also family. Fast on the heels of the second Las Vegas show, we had managed to pull some very thick strings and got a booth of our own at the second JA Show of the year in New York, held in July. By then, Jude had unraveled the secrets of prime positioning. There was a portion of the show designated as the “Designer Section” and, of course, it was more expensive than our spot by the bathroom in January. This was truly a coup.
For a change, this trip from Orange County was uneventful. Our children were out of school for the summer and were either in camp or were staying with my husband Rich.
We were anxious at the thought of having such a strategic posi¬tion at such an illustrious showcase. Anyone who was anyone in the retail jewelry business would be there looking for new and unique ideas and products.
By now, Jude was hitting her stride in her marketing efforts and she had put together a great press kit to announce our “arrival” and presence at the august occasion. Ron, Jude’s friend and assistant from her photography days, took a great picture of the two of us sitting on top of a giant green apple, and then super¬imposed the Manhattan skyline in the background. We sent it to all the press that covered the show as well as some of the more promi¬nent attendees/buyers. The mailing was a huge hit, which just continued to solidify what we hoped would eventually be part of our plan to brand our image—everything would be green and black, always using the apples as a prop. It had the makings of all successful marketing; it was unique and memorable and it set us apart from all the look-alike advertising in the industry. And believe it or not, we won the prestigious Golden Apple Award for innovations in jewelry marketing.
The show was to run from Sunday morning until Wednesday afternoon, but because of the rules and laws governing labor union personnel, no one was allowed in the Javitz Center to begin set up before 1:00 Sunday afternoon. All exhibitors were supposed to be out of the building no later than 8:00 that night.
By this time, we’d grown savvy about shipping our product line ahead and not trying to carry everything on the plane. Besides, our line was much larger now and it needed to be sent in a trunk. In addition, union personnel are the only ones allowed to bring the products into the Center. They deliver shipments to the booths, at which point the exhibitors are free to unpack, add decorations and promotional materials—in short, set up.
Jude and I got to our area promptly at 1:00 to find nothing, which at first was no big thing. There were over 200 booths in the Center and we knew it would take time for everyone to get their merchandise.
However, after waiting two hours without a hint of when our trunk would show up, we began to get concerned. Jude went to the delivery area to inquire while I sat at the booth and tapped my fin¬gers. When she returned, she was considerably more concerned than when she’d left.
With furrowed eyebrows and biting her lip, she related her findings. According to the union guys, most of the merchandise had been delivered already, and there were only a couple more booths to go.
We managed to remain positive until about 5:00, when we finally went into full-blown panic. It was obvious our trunk had been lost somewhere, and in it, more than $50,000 worth of our jewelry. More importantly, we’d already paid for the booth and all the pre-show marketing—all nonrefundable expenses with airline fares and hotel charges on top of that.
All that night we lay awake, half panicked that our trunk would never arrive. Finally, I fell asleep at 4:00 a.m., resolved that whatever was about to happen would happen for some reason. When the alarm sounded at 5:30, I felt as if I was in a coma, barely able to raise my head off the pillow. I’m sure that Jude felt the same.
We dressed quickly, gulped some coffee, and were downstairs within 10 minutes, in the cab, and off to the Center. Exhibitors were allowed to come in at 6:30, so when the doors opened we ran as fast as we could to our booth.
No trunk.
My heart fell down into my stomach. We just sat on the two foldout chairs, our heads in hand. However, the doors didn’t open to the buyers until 9:30, so all was lost—not yet.
Finally, at 9:00 a.m., a man in a pair of dirty overalls came down the aisle with a solitary trunk on a dolly. We crossed our fin¬gers and prayed he would stop at booth number 181.
“You JudeFrances?” he asked.
“Yes. Yes,” we chimed together.
“Well, I think we’ve found your trunk.”
“Oh, thank God,” I said, as I knelt down and planted a big slobbery kiss on the top of the heavy box.
Behind me, Jude was doing an Irish jig around the inside of our booth, holding her fists high in the air in joy.
“No ma’am. This isn’t your trunk. I just said, I thought we might have found it—in New Jersey. It might have been sent on the wrong shipment.”
All the air left my body as I slumped to the floor and Jude stopped dancing.
“We’ll keep an eye out, though. If it is in New Jersey, I’ll come back and let you know,” he said, and off he went pushing someone else’s merchandise.
By the time the buyers began filing in, we had lost all hope and were about to pack up our sign, flyers, and table coverings, when the same man came back, still pushing what looked like the same trunk.
New York Trade Show
“Ma’am, I’m so sorry. This is your trunk. They did find one in New Jersey, but it was supposed to be delivered to someone called Francis. Somehow, the office got it all screwed up.
“The bill of lading on this one is wrong, too. It says, J. Fran and it says booth 818 instead of 181. I’m really sorry, ma’am. Have a nice day,” he said as he pushed the cart into our booth.
While buyers were already filing in, we began to frantically set up our displays. If everything happens for a reason, the only reason I can conceive of for this latest adventure/lesson, was to teach us patience.
We finished the weekend selling $500,000 worth of jewelry.
With each new person we hired, we continued to follow our one Human Resources dictum: Surround yourself with people who have the talents or the desires that you don’t. By the time we’d hired Barbara in sales, it was painfully obvious that we would never grow to the next level without more help.
There are nearly 4,000 retailers in the United States who sell our type of jewelry, all of whom were potential clients. You can’t reach them all with one or two people. Barbara gave us a huge shot of credibility and she opened doors we might never have even known existed, let alone knocked on.
My husband Rich had been on the board of directors of a phe¬nomenal local company called St. John’s Knits. He introduced us to Susan Bush, a human dynamo who was an executive there in charge of more than 500 people. She had forgotten more about running a business and managing people than Jude and I would ever learn, but that didn’t keep me from inviting her to join our company on a consulting basis. We didn’t even have a title for her but I knew we needed her experience, enthusiasm, and business acumen if we were to take it to the next level.
Susan kindly accepted our offer, leaving behind a fabulous job that was paying her far more than we could. There were now seven of us at JudeFrances Jewelry.
At the end of that summer, our generous, if scattered bene¬factor once again came through. Doris had managed to secure a full-page ad in the Manheim’s designer’s catalogue. That space alone was worth $30,000, but it turned out to be a mixed blessing. We were given absolutely no say in the design, or even what pieces to use. That was all dictated by the company and, as it turned out, when Doris finally did leave Manheim’s, her replacement billed us for the space.
All in all, though, it had been a fantastic year. We closed out December of 2004 having sold nearly $5.4 million worth of jewelry.
The only problem was that Jude didn’t actually book us a booth; she couldn’t because there was a 10-year waiting list. Instead, she convinced a friend who had a large booth to share. We didn’t actually share the 20-foot space; he gave us a table about two-feet square at the back of his booth, for which we were very grateful.
His extensive array of gorgeous jewelry dwarfed our line, but we were happy. Since sharing a booth was strictly forbidden, we were flying under the radar—no signs, no flyers, and no promo¬tions. We just kept a low profile. Yet, even at that, hidden in the back, without even a sign, we grossed a half million dollars in sales.
The Manheim’s people tempered the elation over our success at the Sands when they asked us what our Fall line would look like. Did we have anything new?
It was nearly the end of July. And much like the first time we shipped to Doris, we realized she still hadn’t told us what to send.
In standard industry practice, the buyer dictates which items you are offering that she wants in the stores, using your line sheets and phone conversations to arrive at a final decision—hopefully more than two weeks prior to shipping.
Also standard practice, all products in the Fall line must arrive at Manheim’s no later than August 15th for sale in September. All I could think of was Marley, our fairy godmother in Shipping, and all Jude could think about was the possibility of missing an entire season. Neither of us was looking forward to arriving in Orange County the next day looking forward to the prospects of more 18 hour days readying the line for shipment.
I called Doris when we got back to our room and told her that all the buyers at JCK loved our line and we’d done very well, but just what did she want us to send her for this next shipment?
As always, in her scattered, but nevertheless effective style, she simply said, “Do what you think is best, but I must have $30,000 worth for each store by August 15th. And this time, use Fed Ex.”
Coming off a $500,000 showing at the Sands, Doris had just ordered another $150,000 worth of merchandise to our sales. We were ecstatic, but there was still the very difficult job of filling the orders.
It was time to hire another person. We were desperate for help in operations and I wound up finding exactly what we was looking for in my own backyard literally.
Cleopatra, or Cleo as we call her, was living in our garage apartment. She is an astounding young musician who was in the United States on a full scholarship to USC and playing for the Orange County Symphony Orchestra.
My husband, who sits on the board, was attending a Symphony meeting when the director mentioned that a student needed a place to stay while studying music. Rich volunteered our home and Cleo moved in the next day. Cleo continued her studies and became a wonderful addition to our family and a second daughter to me.
When I knew I needed help, I wanted someone I could trust and had to look no further than Cleo. When I asked if she would join us, she was thrilled with the opportunity and came to work immediately.
About a year and half later I realized that Cleo, Lorraine, Jude and I could not do all that was required to run our growing busi¬ness. Everyone was working at maximum levels and again it was time to hire another person. Cleo’s work ethic mirrored ours, so it was natural for me to ask her if she knew anyone who was looking for work. As it turned out, Cleo’s brother, who is also an out¬standing musician, had a girlfriend who was looking for work. Upon meeting Camillia, I knew immediately that she too would be the perfect fit for our business. She started in September of 2004.
Rounding out our team is Ioana, also a friend of Cleo and Camillia’s who started that same December. She has been the per¬fect fit for us. Finally, Jude and I had a brilliant team assembled to take our growing company to the next level.
At this point, we had Loraine handling accounting, Barbara handling national sales, Cleo, Camilla and Iona—an eclectic, cre¬ative, and efficient team that was also family. Fast on the heels of the second Las Vegas show, we had managed to pull some very thick strings and got a booth of our own at the second JA Show of the year in New York, held in July. By then, Jude had unraveled the secrets of prime positioning. There was a portion of the show designated as the “Designer Section” and, of course, it was more expensive than our spot by the bathroom in January. This was truly a coup.
For a change, this trip from Orange County was uneventful. Our children were out of school for the summer and were either in camp or were staying with my husband Rich.
We were anxious at the thought of having such a strategic posi¬tion at such an illustrious showcase. Anyone who was anyone in the retail jewelry business would be there looking for new and unique ideas and products.
By now, Jude was hitting her stride in her marketing efforts and she had put together a great press kit to announce our “arrival” and presence at the august occasion. Ron, Jude’s friend and assistant from her photography days, took a great picture of the two of us sitting on top of a giant green apple, and then super¬imposed the Manhattan skyline in the background. We sent it to all the press that covered the show as well as some of the more promi¬nent attendees/buyers. The mailing was a huge hit, which just continued to solidify what we hoped would eventually be part of our plan to brand our image—everything would be green and black, always using the apples as a prop. It had the makings of all successful marketing; it was unique and memorable and it set us apart from all the look-alike advertising in the industry. And believe it or not, we won the prestigious Golden Apple Award for innovations in jewelry marketing.
The show was to run from Sunday morning until Wednesday afternoon, but because of the rules and laws governing labor union personnel, no one was allowed in the Javitz Center to begin set up before 1:00 Sunday afternoon. All exhibitors were supposed to be out of the building no later than 8:00 that night.
By this time, we’d grown savvy about shipping our product line ahead and not trying to carry everything on the plane. Besides, our line was much larger now and it needed to be sent in a trunk. In addition, union personnel are the only ones allowed to bring the products into the Center. They deliver shipments to the booths, at which point the exhibitors are free to unpack, add decorations and promotional materials—in short, set up.
Jude and I got to our area promptly at 1:00 to find nothing, which at first was no big thing. There were over 200 booths in the Center and we knew it would take time for everyone to get their merchandise.
However, after waiting two hours without a hint of when our trunk would show up, we began to get concerned. Jude went to the delivery area to inquire while I sat at the booth and tapped my fin¬gers. When she returned, she was considerably more concerned than when she’d left.
With furrowed eyebrows and biting her lip, she related her findings. According to the union guys, most of the merchandise had been delivered already, and there were only a couple more booths to go.
We managed to remain positive until about 5:00, when we finally went into full-blown panic. It was obvious our trunk had been lost somewhere, and in it, more than $50,000 worth of our jewelry. More importantly, we’d already paid for the booth and all the pre-show marketing—all nonrefundable expenses with airline fares and hotel charges on top of that.
All that night we lay awake, half panicked that our trunk would never arrive. Finally, I fell asleep at 4:00 a.m., resolved that whatever was about to happen would happen for some reason. When the alarm sounded at 5:30, I felt as if I was in a coma, barely able to raise my head off the pillow. I’m sure that Jude felt the same.
We dressed quickly, gulped some coffee, and were downstairs within 10 minutes, in the cab, and off to the Center. Exhibitors were allowed to come in at 6:30, so when the doors opened we ran as fast as we could to our booth.
No trunk.
My heart fell down into my stomach. We just sat on the two foldout chairs, our heads in hand. However, the doors didn’t open to the buyers until 9:30, so all was lost—not yet.
Finally, at 9:00 a.m., a man in a pair of dirty overalls came down the aisle with a solitary trunk on a dolly. We crossed our fin¬gers and prayed he would stop at booth number 181.
“You JudeFrances?” he asked.
“Yes. Yes,” we chimed together.
“Well, I think we’ve found your trunk.”
“Oh, thank God,” I said, as I knelt down and planted a big slobbery kiss on the top of the heavy box.
Behind me, Jude was doing an Irish jig around the inside of our booth, holding her fists high in the air in joy.
“No ma’am. This isn’t your trunk. I just said, I thought we might have found it—in New Jersey. It might have been sent on the wrong shipment.”
All the air left my body as I slumped to the floor and Jude stopped dancing.
“We’ll keep an eye out, though. If it is in New Jersey, I’ll come back and let you know,” he said, and off he went pushing someone else’s merchandise.
By the time the buyers began filing in, we had lost all hope and were about to pack up our sign, flyers, and table coverings, when the same man came back, still pushing what looked like the same trunk.
New York Trade Show
“Ma’am, I’m so sorry. This is your trunk. They did find one in New Jersey, but it was supposed to be delivered to someone called Francis. Somehow, the office got it all screwed up.
“The bill of lading on this one is wrong, too. It says, J. Fran and it says booth 818 instead of 181. I’m really sorry, ma’am. Have a nice day,” he said as he pushed the cart into our booth.
While buyers were already filing in, we began to frantically set up our displays. If everything happens for a reason, the only reason I can conceive of for this latest adventure/lesson, was to teach us patience.
We finished the weekend selling $500,000 worth of jewelry.
With each new person we hired, we continued to follow our one Human Resources dictum: Surround yourself with people who have the talents or the desires that you don’t. By the time we’d hired Barbara in sales, it was painfully obvious that we would never grow to the next level without more help.
There are nearly 4,000 retailers in the United States who sell our type of jewelry, all of whom were potential clients. You can’t reach them all with one or two people. Barbara gave us a huge shot of credibility and she opened doors we might never have even known existed, let alone knocked on.
My husband Rich had been on the board of directors of a phe¬nomenal local company called St. John’s Knits. He introduced us to Susan Bush, a human dynamo who was an executive there in charge of more than 500 people. She had forgotten more about running a business and managing people than Jude and I would ever learn, but that didn’t keep me from inviting her to join our company on a consulting basis. We didn’t even have a title for her but I knew we needed her experience, enthusiasm, and business acumen if we were to take it to the next level.
Susan kindly accepted our offer, leaving behind a fabulous job that was paying her far more than we could. There were now seven of us at JudeFrances Jewelry.
At the end of that summer, our generous, if scattered bene¬factor once again came through. Doris had managed to secure a full-page ad in the Manheim’s designer’s catalogue. That space alone was worth $30,000, but it turned out to be a mixed blessing. We were given absolutely no say in the design, or even what pieces to use. That was all dictated by the company and, as it turned out, when Doris finally did leave Manheim’s, her replacement billed us for the space.
All in all, though, it had been a fantastic year. We closed out December of 2004 having sold nearly $5.4 million worth of jewelry.
Chapter 12-Rascal Redux
REMEMBER RASCAL? When last we heard about our furry rodent he’d survived the $700 surgery and the plastic cone.
One morning, the day that Frances and I were scheduled to fly to Dallas again, I heard Ruby screaming, “Mommy! Mommy! Rascal’s disappeared into the wall. He’s going to get lost. We’ll never find him.”
Kendall, who is two years older than Ruby, and very street wise for her age, said, “Mom, he’s going to crawl up there and die and then he’ll stink up the whole house.”
Obviously, Kendall wasn’t as attached to Rascal as Ruby was. To Ruby, he was a friend. To me, he was rapidly becoming an investment.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s think this through logically. What can we do to lure Rascal back out?”
“I know. Let’s get some of those yogurt balls he loves so much and we’ll put them by the hole and when he comes out, I’ll grab him,” Ruby offered.
Humh…very good idea.
So we put two yogurt balls, the blueberry flavored ones he loved, in front of the hole and tried not to stare for fear we’d scare Rascal back. We then adjourned to the dining room and waited. I left the girls there and went upstairs to pack. Our flight was leaving in four hours.
When I returned, Rascal had retrieved the treats, and slipped back into his new hiding place. By the time we noticed, another hour had passed and so I told Ruby that we’d have to take a more proactive stance—I would take a large butcher knife and saw a bigger hole around the opening in the drywall, thinking I could then just reach in and grab him.
Unfortunately, the hole I cut was just next to a stud, so I couldn’t reach him. Then Ruby started to cry, and knowing I needed reinforcements, I called Frances to come over and help assess the situation, telling her I was afraid I was going to be late, and how we couldn’t leave with such an emergency transpiring.
By the time Frances arrived, we were down to two hours.
“What am I going to do, Frances?”
“I’ve got it. Unless you put the food further back away from the wall, he isn’t going to have to reach out much. So, let’s put his treats about four feet out. Then we’ve all got to go into another room so he doesn’t know we’re here.”
“Yeah, but then how are we gonna know when he comes out so we can grab him?” I asked.
“Well, aw... I know. We’ll use the baby monitor.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“We’ll put the baby monitor speaker down near the cabinet and then we’ll put the receiver in the living room with us, and when we hear him come out, we’ll quick, come in, and nab him. Hurry now. Get the monitor. We cannot miss this flight.” Frances said.
I ran upstairs and got the two monitors and did as she told me. The four of us went into the living room and sat huddled around the receiver waiting for the telltale pitter-patter of little feet. Nothing.
Another hour passed and we gave Ruby the job of keeping her ear close to the monitor while we made last minute cell phone calls. We had only an hour left.
“You know what? I’m just going to tiptoe in there to check and see if he’s eaten any of the goodies,” I said. Sure enough, the yogurt balls were gone. When I told Frances what a dumb idea I thought she’d had—after all, how much noise does a hamster make—Ruby broke out in tears again.
Well, there was no way we were going to miss our flight on account of a hamster. I didn’t want Ruby to be upset, so I decided she would be in charge of catching Rascal while we were away on a short, two day trip in the hopes that having a mission would calm her. She relished the assignment.
Fortunately, I was packed, which gave me just enough time to run to the pet store and buy a humane cage. I brought it back, showed Ruby and the sitter who was staying with the kids that weekend how to use it, and Frances and I were off.
There followed at least 10 Rascal sightings that Ruby was kind enough to report one by one via cell phone. Whenever I see my home number light up in caller ID, I always answer. With three children, you never know what’s going to be happening next.
The first call came when we were in a meeting with Doris and some top executives from Manheim’s. Now, you have to picture this staid boardroom with these executives, Doris, me, and Frances sitting in large imposing high-back, black leather chairs, talking very seriously about upcoming orders, marketing strategies, and whatnot, when the Chinese Dance ring tone blares out of my purse.
“Hi, honey. What’s up?” I said, knowing it was Ruby.
“Mommy, we saw him! We saw him! He was behind the toilet upstairs,” she said, very excited.
“Behind the toilet?” I blurted. “Did you catch him?”
All heads turn to me. I smile. I can hear Frances tapping her foot under the table.
“No, Mommy. He got away.”
“Okay, honey. Well, you just keep trying to catch him and I’ll be home tomorrow night.” I flipped the phone closed and smiled again.
Within 10 minutes, the chime was going off again, but by now, our meeting was over and we were in the hall. This resulted in hourly reports of Rascal sightings from the bathroom, the dining room, the kitchen and back.
By the time I returned home, Rascal was still on the lam and then Frances had another great idea.
“Jude, why don’t we just go buy another hamster that looks like Rascal and put him in the cage? Ruby will never know.”
“That’s a great idea!” I said. So the following morning, Frances and I took a picture that Ruby had taken of Rascal and went to the pet store to find a clone. Most of them looked very similar, but we found one that was just right. We put him in the cage when Ruby was outside playing.
When Ruby came in, she was ecstatic. She grabbed the hefty hamster and gave him a big hug while Frances and I held our col¬lective breaths to see if she was going to be able to tell that it wasn’t Rascal.
All was well and we went back to our normal routines until one morning, about a week later, while Rascal #2 was running on the treadmill in his cage, Ruby yelled, “Mom! Mom! Rascal’s found a friend.”
What?
When I went into the dining room, sitting there as sassy as you please was Rascal #1 sniffing at the intruder that was in his home. Turns out Rascal #2 was a female. Why didn’t we think of that in the first place?
Upshot?
We almost missed a very important flight because of a hamster.
I paid $125 for a humane cage, and it cost me $250 for a handyman to repair the drywall where I’d carved out a three foot wide hole.
But all in all, it turned out well. We used the humane cage to put Rascal #1 in until we could slowly introduce him to his new girlfriend, and they could share one cage. And, most importantly, Ruby was happy and her mother hadn’t let her down.
Aw, the little memories in life. There are so many things that go on with our business; the frantic dashing for airplanes, the lost IDs, the incessant cell phone calls, the successes we enjoy in our business, the failures…but the ones that I remember most are always about my children and the things they are going through as I watch them grow up.
Frances mentioned that our work energizes us, and it does. I know she would agree if I added here, that our children also ener¬gize us. That’s not to pretend they don’t wear us out mentally, emotionally and physically as well because, let’s face it, kids do that too.
However, there are times when, as the old TV program proved, Kids Say The Darndest Things. After we’d been on several whirlwind business trips and Frances and I had both shared our elation and our successes and tried to explain why we weren’t always there for them, Colt, my oldest, came into the living room one night as I was holding a cold compress to my head. He was 11 at the time.
It was nearly midnight and Frances and I had just finished another 15- hour day. I was exhausted, I couldn’t sleep.
“Mom,” he said.
“Hi, sweetie. You should be in bed. What’s up?”
“Yeah, I know. I couldn’t sleep, either.”
“Well then, how did your day go?”
“Fine. You know what, Mom? I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Sure, sweetie,” I said, pulling myself up and preparing for something bad.
“Well, I just wanted you to know that I’m really proud of you and I love you.”
With that he bent over and gave me a huge hug, turned, and went back to bed like a young guardian angel. I was breathless for a second. Colt had always been kind and thoughtful, even as a pre¬schooler, so it wasn’t out of character for him to make that gesture. Still, it was a surprise—a very pleasant one.
And then the tears started.
Talk about getting energized.
By April of 2003, we had nearly a full line of designs. People were calling it “edgy but elegant.” One magazine reviewer wrote: “JudeFrances Jewelry is progressive enough to appeal to the modern woman’s ambitious independent side, yet delicate enough to express her romantic feminine side.”
Wow! The writer had captured exactly what Frances and I had been trying to create, though we had summed it up with the word “fun.” We knew in our hearts that no one has to buy jewelry; it isn't exactly a survival staple.
However, being marketing savvy, I explained to Frances that the psychology of buying jewelry was much more sophisticated than just having fun. The right piece can actually make you feel more independent, elegant, or ambitious.
The funny thing is, when we started designing in the very beginning, we didn't give much thought to such lofty Madison Avenue psychological factors.
Then, just when Frances and I thought we had our audience nailed as the “every woman,” who should walk into our trunk show but the most powerful woman in the world—or at least one of the most influential—the big “O”, Oprah.
Frances and I were at one of the Manheim’s trunk shows when I spotted her. I was so excited I just started stammering to Frances, “Oh my gaw-w-w-d. Look, it’s Oprah,” I said in a high-pitched, excited voice that I’m so grateful she couldn’t hear. Frances stopped what she was doing and began gawking as well. There she was in the flesh and then she started walking toward us.
“Oh, these are fun,” she said picking up a pair of hoops.
I have to admit, although I’ve always wanted to meet the woman who, in my mind, is the empress of self-reliance and the goddess of our philosophy of Just Go for It, the first thing that crossed my mind, being the marketing person that I am, was expo¬sure, sales, sales, sales. If Oprah bought something, and then this was an even bigger stretch—she actually wore it on her show, and then in my dream, she mentioned our company—
we would still be filling orders when all of our kids had grad¬uated from college.
The second thing that came to mind was Danielle McCourt, the woman who charged us $500 for the privilege of being told we’d never make it. You remember, the one who said we were West Coast Wannabes.
I faded into a vision of Frances and me being on TV, inter¬viewed on Oprah’s show. Oprah says, “So, tell us one of your worst experiences…”
“Yes, yes,” I blurted to Oprah as I jerked out of my daydream.
“They are fun, aren’t they? That’s pretty much how we design. We consider ourselves the Ford of the jewelry world, and we pride our¬selves on creating for every woman…” Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my shin where Frances had kicked me. I was babbling like an awe-struck teenager.
“Yes, these are very nice. I love the cross. How much is it?” she asked, and I thought that’s funny; here is the wealthiest woman in the world and she’s shopping retail, just like everyone else.
“That’s $3,000, Ms. Winfrey.” I didn’t feel it was appropriate to call her Oprah, or at least not just yet.
“Oh, I love the Fleur de lis hoops, too, but I don’t have pierced ears. I would like the cross, though, girls,” she said.
I pounced on the opportunity. “Ms. Winfrey…”
“No, dear. Call me Oprah, please.”
“Okay, Oprah. We could make some hoops for you with clips, so you wouldn’t have to pierce your ears.”
“Really? That would be great. Here’s my address and number. Call me when they’re done. Can you send them to me when they’re ready?”
“Of course. Of course.”
Oprah Winfrey was giving me her address and phone number? This was just too good to believe. I looked up to the ceiling and muttered a short thank you to God. In that serendipitous minute, I knew down in my bones that we were going to be hugely suc¬cessful and I could quit worrying about it. I felt a warm flow of peace come over me and just smiled, not just because Oprah was buying some of our pieces, but also because I could just feel it.
We did very well at the event and, of course, Oprah was the coup de grace. Aside from actually buying our jewelry, she’d single handedly attracted a huge crowd around us. When the hoops were done, I called her and had them shipped and then two weeks later, when I had a break, I tuned into her show one afternoon.
“Oh my gaw-w-w-d,” I yelled out to Frances, holding my hand over my mouth. “Frances, come in here. We’re on TV,” I yelled into her office.
“What? What do you mean we’re on TV? They weren’t filming me when I got that ticket, were they?”
“No. No, we’re on Oprah. She’s wearing our charms and the cross. I can’t believe it!” I was so excited I had goose bumps run¬ning down both arms and legs.
“Oh God, you’re right. Look at that. I can’t believe it. Do you think she’ll mention us?” Frances said.
I kept saying, “Come on, O, let’s hear it. Who made the jew¬elry? Come on. Come on.”
I couldn’t believe I was talking to the television as if Oprah would divine my voice and give us a plug. She eventually did men¬tion us and within days we began to get calls about our line. We were astounded, and oh-so-grateful.
That’s when I had a brilliant idea. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before. We had a large gold circle pendant with a hug and a kiss in the center of it. We should send one to her. Who better to wear an O around her neck than Oprah? Surely she would remember us. Frances got to work on it the very next day and within two weeks we had the piece. I put a card in with the box with a short note, sent it, and then we waited.
About two weeks later, I got a two-page letter, not a thank you card, but a handwritten letter with the ABC studio return address on it. Just the sight of it took my breath away. As I slowly unfolded it, I had visions of grandeur. I imagined how she would be thanking me and wanting to order hundreds of the Os to hand out to her audience, how she was going to tout JudeFrances Jewelry as the next coming in the accessories world, how….
“Dear Jude and Frances:
Oprah loves your hoops and the cross and if you
haven’t been watching the show, she’s worn them con
¬stantly. The O necklace is just lovely, really. She loves
it. However….”
That was how Oprah’s assistant’s letter started, however…the dreaded word. Whenever anyone says, “However,” you know that what’s about to come next negates anything said before. Just then, I turned and the necklace fell out of the envelope.
“However, she just can’t accept this beautiful gift of yours. Ms. Winfrey makes it a strict policy not to accept gifts. If she likes something, she pays for it. But thank you for your kind thoughts; we all wish the two of you great success and harmony,” she finished.
I handed the letter to Frances. I was a little disappointed, but elated just the same. Here we were corresponding with the most influential woman in the country as if we were buddies. We were glad she found our work appealing and hoped that connection would turn into something very important.
In late May, we had our first opportunity to be in The Luxury Show at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. It was a real stretch coming up with the $25,000 entry fee, but Doris had told us it was not to be missed if we were really going to grow.
She continued to help our careers in the most unexpected ways.
First, she’d given us a free loan. Next, she gave us an exclusive. After that, she provided referrals and information to help us grow and finally, for the time being anyway, she continued to pay for any jewelry we sent that was supposed to be on consignment.
Doris, wherever you are today, may the retail gods smile down on you!
Most of the people who exhibit at The Luxury Show bring in literally millions and millions of dollars worth of precious jewelry, the kind you see hanging around the necks of only celebrities or the wives of celebrities.
Our entire line, the case that we wanted to bring, amounted to a paltry $20,000 worth, and none of it was precious or “fine” as they call it in the trade. Nevertheless, it might as well have been millions because we’d have to pay to have it all made and we still couldn’t afford to have more than one set of everything made at a time for shows. If we lost that, we could kiss the $25,000 entry fee goodbye (non-refundable, of course) as well as an enormous opportunity, not to mention the jewelry.
The first decision was obvious, at least to us. Let’s not take the chance of shipping it, or even carrying it with us on a plane. We were both paranoid about it; so much so, that Frances suggested we drive it there, even though Las Vegas is a hot 6-hour drive.
That’s when Frances came up with the brilliant idea of hiring a bodyguard, which turned out to be perfect, because he came with his own limo.
The bodyguard told us to be ready promptly at 8:00 a.m. the morning of our departure, and though there weren’t any airports involved, we still managed to be late.
While Frances was getting ready, Sophie, her Great Dane— think Marmaduke—got out of the house once again. She’s basically harmless, but if you happen to be walking down the street and see her bounding in your direction, your first thought is to quickly find a tree to climb.
Frances was still in her bathrobe and slippers, about to get dressed, when she noticed the front door open and realized Sophie must have gotten out—freedom is one of Sophie’s fun things to do.
Out the door ran Frances, down the driveway, and around the corner. One slipper had come off and her robe was beginning to come untied when she saw a horde of people milling about.
Apparently, a local boy, the son of a prominent local politician, had been arrested and there were no less than five TV network satellite trucks with all their accompanying crew and newscasters out in front of this neighbor’s house.
With all the cameras running, the newscasters with micro¬phones at the ready, Sophie came bounding through the morass of cables and wires, tail wagging gaily, eight-inch tongue flapping from one side of her face to the other, and Frances chasing after her.
Just about the time Sophie was collared and the two of them were walking back up the driveway, the limo appeared.
If there had ever been any man born to be a bodyguard, Guido Spantoni was him. He could block the sun standing 20 feet from you. He was the largest person I’d ever seen. He bulged with mus¬cles to the point they stretched all the seams in his black suit to the bursting point.
In addition, he had a face only a mother could love. One of his front teeth was solid gold and his eyebrows were as bushy and as thatched as Jamaican beach umbrellas. He was bald, had a long deep scar running down the left side of his face from his eyebrow to his chin, the result he later told us, of a knife fight where he’d killed a guy in a bar in self defense.
“Good choice,” I said to Frances as he offered to open the doors of the limo for us. He’d arrived in a stretch Lincoln Continental that could have accommodated 15 people.
The entire scene was so absurd. Frances and I came strutting down the sidewalk with our bags and the keys to the kingdom— our one little jewelry box with all our samples—as if we were royalty.
The ensuing scene at the Venetian was even more ludicrous. Guido did not use the valet parking at the hotel. Instead, he just brazenly parked the ridiculously long Lincoln right in front of the lobby doors, totally ignoring the valets.
As we sat inside, he promptly came around to the side of the car, opened the doors, asked for the box of jewelry, and then let us out. We followed him, not knowing exactly what to do about the car and our luggage, as he now had fallen into full character as our portable bouncer.
His stature alone would have cleared a path through all those waiting for cabs, but that wasn’t sufficient. He pushed people aside left and right like they were rag dolls. He shouted, “Don’t move. I can see everything. I have 360-degree peripheral vision. You, you there, that little man to the right, I can see you with that funny hat on,” he said, referring to a guy who indeed was standing nearly behind us. I was amazed.
When the valets at the Venetian began to unload our bags, he turned around and said, “Don’t touch those. I’ll be back. Stand away from the car.”
The thing that really made it all so funny, if not embarrassing, was the fact that here was this man about six feet, six inches tall, tipping the scales at a conservative 300 pounds shoving and shouting at people, but the prize he was protecting was only a dainty little box, about 15 inches square—think makeup kit. He had dubbed the box, the football in honor of the presidential nuclear trigger in a briefcase.
While the limo was still idling in front, blocking some of the taxis, we followed Guido inside and then he followed us to the check-in desk. Once we’d secured our keys, he followed us duti¬fully up to our room, made sure we were okay alone with the box and then and only then, did he proceed back downstairs to park the limo himself.
One morning, the day that Frances and I were scheduled to fly to Dallas again, I heard Ruby screaming, “Mommy! Mommy! Rascal’s disappeared into the wall. He’s going to get lost. We’ll never find him.”
Kendall, who is two years older than Ruby, and very street wise for her age, said, “Mom, he’s going to crawl up there and die and then he’ll stink up the whole house.”
Obviously, Kendall wasn’t as attached to Rascal as Ruby was. To Ruby, he was a friend. To me, he was rapidly becoming an investment.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s think this through logically. What can we do to lure Rascal back out?”
“I know. Let’s get some of those yogurt balls he loves so much and we’ll put them by the hole and when he comes out, I’ll grab him,” Ruby offered.
Humh…very good idea.
So we put two yogurt balls, the blueberry flavored ones he loved, in front of the hole and tried not to stare for fear we’d scare Rascal back. We then adjourned to the dining room and waited. I left the girls there and went upstairs to pack. Our flight was leaving in four hours.
When I returned, Rascal had retrieved the treats, and slipped back into his new hiding place. By the time we noticed, another hour had passed and so I told Ruby that we’d have to take a more proactive stance—I would take a large butcher knife and saw a bigger hole around the opening in the drywall, thinking I could then just reach in and grab him.
Unfortunately, the hole I cut was just next to a stud, so I couldn’t reach him. Then Ruby started to cry, and knowing I needed reinforcements, I called Frances to come over and help assess the situation, telling her I was afraid I was going to be late, and how we couldn’t leave with such an emergency transpiring.
By the time Frances arrived, we were down to two hours.
“What am I going to do, Frances?”
“I’ve got it. Unless you put the food further back away from the wall, he isn’t going to have to reach out much. So, let’s put his treats about four feet out. Then we’ve all got to go into another room so he doesn’t know we’re here.”
“Yeah, but then how are we gonna know when he comes out so we can grab him?” I asked.
“Well, aw... I know. We’ll use the baby monitor.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“We’ll put the baby monitor speaker down near the cabinet and then we’ll put the receiver in the living room with us, and when we hear him come out, we’ll quick, come in, and nab him. Hurry now. Get the monitor. We cannot miss this flight.” Frances said.
I ran upstairs and got the two monitors and did as she told me. The four of us went into the living room and sat huddled around the receiver waiting for the telltale pitter-patter of little feet. Nothing.
Another hour passed and we gave Ruby the job of keeping her ear close to the monitor while we made last minute cell phone calls. We had only an hour left.
“You know what? I’m just going to tiptoe in there to check and see if he’s eaten any of the goodies,” I said. Sure enough, the yogurt balls were gone. When I told Frances what a dumb idea I thought she’d had—after all, how much noise does a hamster make—Ruby broke out in tears again.
Well, there was no way we were going to miss our flight on account of a hamster. I didn’t want Ruby to be upset, so I decided she would be in charge of catching Rascal while we were away on a short, two day trip in the hopes that having a mission would calm her. She relished the assignment.
Fortunately, I was packed, which gave me just enough time to run to the pet store and buy a humane cage. I brought it back, showed Ruby and the sitter who was staying with the kids that weekend how to use it, and Frances and I were off.
There followed at least 10 Rascal sightings that Ruby was kind enough to report one by one via cell phone. Whenever I see my home number light up in caller ID, I always answer. With three children, you never know what’s going to be happening next.
The first call came when we were in a meeting with Doris and some top executives from Manheim’s. Now, you have to picture this staid boardroom with these executives, Doris, me, and Frances sitting in large imposing high-back, black leather chairs, talking very seriously about upcoming orders, marketing strategies, and whatnot, when the Chinese Dance ring tone blares out of my purse.
“Hi, honey. What’s up?” I said, knowing it was Ruby.
“Mommy, we saw him! We saw him! He was behind the toilet upstairs,” she said, very excited.
“Behind the toilet?” I blurted. “Did you catch him?”
All heads turn to me. I smile. I can hear Frances tapping her foot under the table.
“No, Mommy. He got away.”
“Okay, honey. Well, you just keep trying to catch him and I’ll be home tomorrow night.” I flipped the phone closed and smiled again.
Within 10 minutes, the chime was going off again, but by now, our meeting was over and we were in the hall. This resulted in hourly reports of Rascal sightings from the bathroom, the dining room, the kitchen and back.
By the time I returned home, Rascal was still on the lam and then Frances had another great idea.
“Jude, why don’t we just go buy another hamster that looks like Rascal and put him in the cage? Ruby will never know.”
“That’s a great idea!” I said. So the following morning, Frances and I took a picture that Ruby had taken of Rascal and went to the pet store to find a clone. Most of them looked very similar, but we found one that was just right. We put him in the cage when Ruby was outside playing.
When Ruby came in, she was ecstatic. She grabbed the hefty hamster and gave him a big hug while Frances and I held our col¬lective breaths to see if she was going to be able to tell that it wasn’t Rascal.
All was well and we went back to our normal routines until one morning, about a week later, while Rascal #2 was running on the treadmill in his cage, Ruby yelled, “Mom! Mom! Rascal’s found a friend.”
What?
When I went into the dining room, sitting there as sassy as you please was Rascal #1 sniffing at the intruder that was in his home. Turns out Rascal #2 was a female. Why didn’t we think of that in the first place?
Upshot?
We almost missed a very important flight because of a hamster.
I paid $125 for a humane cage, and it cost me $250 for a handyman to repair the drywall where I’d carved out a three foot wide hole.
But all in all, it turned out well. We used the humane cage to put Rascal #1 in until we could slowly introduce him to his new girlfriend, and they could share one cage. And, most importantly, Ruby was happy and her mother hadn’t let her down.
Aw, the little memories in life. There are so many things that go on with our business; the frantic dashing for airplanes, the lost IDs, the incessant cell phone calls, the successes we enjoy in our business, the failures…but the ones that I remember most are always about my children and the things they are going through as I watch them grow up.
Frances mentioned that our work energizes us, and it does. I know she would agree if I added here, that our children also ener¬gize us. That’s not to pretend they don’t wear us out mentally, emotionally and physically as well because, let’s face it, kids do that too.
However, there are times when, as the old TV program proved, Kids Say The Darndest Things. After we’d been on several whirlwind business trips and Frances and I had both shared our elation and our successes and tried to explain why we weren’t always there for them, Colt, my oldest, came into the living room one night as I was holding a cold compress to my head. He was 11 at the time.
It was nearly midnight and Frances and I had just finished another 15- hour day. I was exhausted, I couldn’t sleep.
“Mom,” he said.
“Hi, sweetie. You should be in bed. What’s up?”
“Yeah, I know. I couldn’t sleep, either.”
“Well then, how did your day go?”
“Fine. You know what, Mom? I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Sure, sweetie,” I said, pulling myself up and preparing for something bad.
“Well, I just wanted you to know that I’m really proud of you and I love you.”
With that he bent over and gave me a huge hug, turned, and went back to bed like a young guardian angel. I was breathless for a second. Colt had always been kind and thoughtful, even as a pre¬schooler, so it wasn’t out of character for him to make that gesture. Still, it was a surprise—a very pleasant one.
And then the tears started.
Talk about getting energized.
By April of 2003, we had nearly a full line of designs. People were calling it “edgy but elegant.” One magazine reviewer wrote: “JudeFrances Jewelry is progressive enough to appeal to the modern woman’s ambitious independent side, yet delicate enough to express her romantic feminine side.”
Wow! The writer had captured exactly what Frances and I had been trying to create, though we had summed it up with the word “fun.” We knew in our hearts that no one has to buy jewelry; it isn't exactly a survival staple.
However, being marketing savvy, I explained to Frances that the psychology of buying jewelry was much more sophisticated than just having fun. The right piece can actually make you feel more independent, elegant, or ambitious.
The funny thing is, when we started designing in the very beginning, we didn't give much thought to such lofty Madison Avenue psychological factors.
Then, just when Frances and I thought we had our audience nailed as the “every woman,” who should walk into our trunk show but the most powerful woman in the world—or at least one of the most influential—the big “O”, Oprah.
Frances and I were at one of the Manheim’s trunk shows when I spotted her. I was so excited I just started stammering to Frances, “Oh my gaw-w-w-d. Look, it’s Oprah,” I said in a high-pitched, excited voice that I’m so grateful she couldn’t hear. Frances stopped what she was doing and began gawking as well. There she was in the flesh and then she started walking toward us.
“Oh, these are fun,” she said picking up a pair of hoops.
I have to admit, although I’ve always wanted to meet the woman who, in my mind, is the empress of self-reliance and the goddess of our philosophy of Just Go for It, the first thing that crossed my mind, being the marketing person that I am, was expo¬sure, sales, sales, sales. If Oprah bought something, and then this was an even bigger stretch—she actually wore it on her show, and then in my dream, she mentioned our company—
we would still be filling orders when all of our kids had grad¬uated from college.
The second thing that came to mind was Danielle McCourt, the woman who charged us $500 for the privilege of being told we’d never make it. You remember, the one who said we were West Coast Wannabes.
I faded into a vision of Frances and me being on TV, inter¬viewed on Oprah’s show. Oprah says, “So, tell us one of your worst experiences…”
“Yes, yes,” I blurted to Oprah as I jerked out of my daydream.
“They are fun, aren’t they? That’s pretty much how we design. We consider ourselves the Ford of the jewelry world, and we pride our¬selves on creating for every woman…” Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my shin where Frances had kicked me. I was babbling like an awe-struck teenager.
“Yes, these are very nice. I love the cross. How much is it?” she asked, and I thought that’s funny; here is the wealthiest woman in the world and she’s shopping retail, just like everyone else.
“That’s $3,000, Ms. Winfrey.” I didn’t feel it was appropriate to call her Oprah, or at least not just yet.
“Oh, I love the Fleur de lis hoops, too, but I don’t have pierced ears. I would like the cross, though, girls,” she said.
I pounced on the opportunity. “Ms. Winfrey…”
“No, dear. Call me Oprah, please.”
“Okay, Oprah. We could make some hoops for you with clips, so you wouldn’t have to pierce your ears.”
“Really? That would be great. Here’s my address and number. Call me when they’re done. Can you send them to me when they’re ready?”
“Of course. Of course.”
Oprah Winfrey was giving me her address and phone number? This was just too good to believe. I looked up to the ceiling and muttered a short thank you to God. In that serendipitous minute, I knew down in my bones that we were going to be hugely suc¬cessful and I could quit worrying about it. I felt a warm flow of peace come over me and just smiled, not just because Oprah was buying some of our pieces, but also because I could just feel it.
We did very well at the event and, of course, Oprah was the coup de grace. Aside from actually buying our jewelry, she’d single handedly attracted a huge crowd around us. When the hoops were done, I called her and had them shipped and then two weeks later, when I had a break, I tuned into her show one afternoon.
“Oh my gaw-w-w-d,” I yelled out to Frances, holding my hand over my mouth. “Frances, come in here. We’re on TV,” I yelled into her office.
“What? What do you mean we’re on TV? They weren’t filming me when I got that ticket, were they?”
“No. No, we’re on Oprah. She’s wearing our charms and the cross. I can’t believe it!” I was so excited I had goose bumps run¬ning down both arms and legs.
“Oh God, you’re right. Look at that. I can’t believe it. Do you think she’ll mention us?” Frances said.
I kept saying, “Come on, O, let’s hear it. Who made the jew¬elry? Come on. Come on.”
I couldn’t believe I was talking to the television as if Oprah would divine my voice and give us a plug. She eventually did men¬tion us and within days we began to get calls about our line. We were astounded, and oh-so-grateful.
That’s when I had a brilliant idea. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before. We had a large gold circle pendant with a hug and a kiss in the center of it. We should send one to her. Who better to wear an O around her neck than Oprah? Surely she would remember us. Frances got to work on it the very next day and within two weeks we had the piece. I put a card in with the box with a short note, sent it, and then we waited.
About two weeks later, I got a two-page letter, not a thank you card, but a handwritten letter with the ABC studio return address on it. Just the sight of it took my breath away. As I slowly unfolded it, I had visions of grandeur. I imagined how she would be thanking me and wanting to order hundreds of the Os to hand out to her audience, how she was going to tout JudeFrances Jewelry as the next coming in the accessories world, how….
“Dear Jude and Frances:
Oprah loves your hoops and the cross and if you
haven’t been watching the show, she’s worn them con
¬stantly. The O necklace is just lovely, really. She loves
it. However….”
That was how Oprah’s assistant’s letter started, however…the dreaded word. Whenever anyone says, “However,” you know that what’s about to come next negates anything said before. Just then, I turned and the necklace fell out of the envelope.
“However, she just can’t accept this beautiful gift of yours. Ms. Winfrey makes it a strict policy not to accept gifts. If she likes something, she pays for it. But thank you for your kind thoughts; we all wish the two of you great success and harmony,” she finished.
I handed the letter to Frances. I was a little disappointed, but elated just the same. Here we were corresponding with the most influential woman in the country as if we were buddies. We were glad she found our work appealing and hoped that connection would turn into something very important.
In late May, we had our first opportunity to be in The Luxury Show at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. It was a real stretch coming up with the $25,000 entry fee, but Doris had told us it was not to be missed if we were really going to grow.
She continued to help our careers in the most unexpected ways.
First, she’d given us a free loan. Next, she gave us an exclusive. After that, she provided referrals and information to help us grow and finally, for the time being anyway, she continued to pay for any jewelry we sent that was supposed to be on consignment.
Doris, wherever you are today, may the retail gods smile down on you!
Most of the people who exhibit at The Luxury Show bring in literally millions and millions of dollars worth of precious jewelry, the kind you see hanging around the necks of only celebrities or the wives of celebrities.
Our entire line, the case that we wanted to bring, amounted to a paltry $20,000 worth, and none of it was precious or “fine” as they call it in the trade. Nevertheless, it might as well have been millions because we’d have to pay to have it all made and we still couldn’t afford to have more than one set of everything made at a time for shows. If we lost that, we could kiss the $25,000 entry fee goodbye (non-refundable, of course) as well as an enormous opportunity, not to mention the jewelry.
The first decision was obvious, at least to us. Let’s not take the chance of shipping it, or even carrying it with us on a plane. We were both paranoid about it; so much so, that Frances suggested we drive it there, even though Las Vegas is a hot 6-hour drive.
That’s when Frances came up with the brilliant idea of hiring a bodyguard, which turned out to be perfect, because he came with his own limo.
The bodyguard told us to be ready promptly at 8:00 a.m. the morning of our departure, and though there weren’t any airports involved, we still managed to be late.
While Frances was getting ready, Sophie, her Great Dane— think Marmaduke—got out of the house once again. She’s basically harmless, but if you happen to be walking down the street and see her bounding in your direction, your first thought is to quickly find a tree to climb.
Frances was still in her bathrobe and slippers, about to get dressed, when she noticed the front door open and realized Sophie must have gotten out—freedom is one of Sophie’s fun things to do.
Out the door ran Frances, down the driveway, and around the corner. One slipper had come off and her robe was beginning to come untied when she saw a horde of people milling about.
Apparently, a local boy, the son of a prominent local politician, had been arrested and there were no less than five TV network satellite trucks with all their accompanying crew and newscasters out in front of this neighbor’s house.
With all the cameras running, the newscasters with micro¬phones at the ready, Sophie came bounding through the morass of cables and wires, tail wagging gaily, eight-inch tongue flapping from one side of her face to the other, and Frances chasing after her.
Just about the time Sophie was collared and the two of them were walking back up the driveway, the limo appeared.
If there had ever been any man born to be a bodyguard, Guido Spantoni was him. He could block the sun standing 20 feet from you. He was the largest person I’d ever seen. He bulged with mus¬cles to the point they stretched all the seams in his black suit to the bursting point.
In addition, he had a face only a mother could love. One of his front teeth was solid gold and his eyebrows were as bushy and as thatched as Jamaican beach umbrellas. He was bald, had a long deep scar running down the left side of his face from his eyebrow to his chin, the result he later told us, of a knife fight where he’d killed a guy in a bar in self defense.
“Good choice,” I said to Frances as he offered to open the doors of the limo for us. He’d arrived in a stretch Lincoln Continental that could have accommodated 15 people.
The entire scene was so absurd. Frances and I came strutting down the sidewalk with our bags and the keys to the kingdom— our one little jewelry box with all our samples—as if we were royalty.
The ensuing scene at the Venetian was even more ludicrous. Guido did not use the valet parking at the hotel. Instead, he just brazenly parked the ridiculously long Lincoln right in front of the lobby doors, totally ignoring the valets.
As we sat inside, he promptly came around to the side of the car, opened the doors, asked for the box of jewelry, and then let us out. We followed him, not knowing exactly what to do about the car and our luggage, as he now had fallen into full character as our portable bouncer.
His stature alone would have cleared a path through all those waiting for cabs, but that wasn’t sufficient. He pushed people aside left and right like they were rag dolls. He shouted, “Don’t move. I can see everything. I have 360-degree peripheral vision. You, you there, that little man to the right, I can see you with that funny hat on,” he said, referring to a guy who indeed was standing nearly behind us. I was amazed.
When the valets at the Venetian began to unload our bags, he turned around and said, “Don’t touch those. I’ll be back. Stand away from the car.”
The thing that really made it all so funny, if not embarrassing, was the fact that here was this man about six feet, six inches tall, tipping the scales at a conservative 300 pounds shoving and shouting at people, but the prize he was protecting was only a dainty little box, about 15 inches square—think makeup kit. He had dubbed the box, the football in honor of the presidential nuclear trigger in a briefcase.
While the limo was still idling in front, blocking some of the taxis, we followed Guido inside and then he followed us to the check-in desk. Once we’d secured our keys, he followed us duti¬fully up to our room, made sure we were okay alone with the box and then and only then, did he proceed back downstairs to park the limo himself.
Chapter 11-Forgetting to Remember
“MOM. HOW COULD YOU forget twice?” Rich moaned into the phone.
“Oh honey. I’m so sorry,” I begged back, “I just got so wrapped up in this order, I completely forgot.”
Unfortunately, I had far too many conversations like that with my son. With the advent of the Manheim’s account, our business was really exploding and there were so many things to accomplish every day. I was so absorbed in it that I would completely forget to pick up the kids from school, or an upcoming recital, or a soccer match—the list is practically endless.
That particular day, I had promised my son Rich I would pick him up after soccer practice at 3:00 sharp. At 2:45, I was totally immersed in some new designs and at the same time I was trying to figure out several screwed up invoices.
I knew from my days as an interior designer, that when you love what you’re doing, you become oblivious to the world around you. That’s the nature of the feeling. It’s very much like when we’re children, playing with dolls or toy soldiers, creating our own world or characters and dialogue, and Mom calls out that it’s time for dinner. But you never hear her and after the third time, she comes storming into the bedroom and berates you for not listening. You simply did not hear her, or anything else going on around you.
Unfortunately, as we grow into adults, we lose that ability to get lost in play. Everything becomes serious and important. However, for those of us who are blessed to be able to make a living at the thing that is play for us, we can still enjoy those feelings and like the grown boys who are paid well to play baseball or football or what¬ever game it is they enjoy—we can have fun doing it.
That’s why I’ve told my two children, and I know Jude has told her three, that one of the most important things in life is to find out what it is you love. My daughter loves animals. She might become a veterinarian, but then again, she might just open her own shelter for the unwanted and take care of them and find them good homes and never make more than a rudimentary living—but she’ll be loving every minute of it.
At any rate, not to make excuses, but that day, and many others, when I told Rich I’d pick him up at three, I meant it. Then, when he called at 3:25 wondering where I was, I was mortified. I’d fallen into the hypnosis of my play. I apologized profusely and told him I’d be there in five minutes. Then I hung up the phone and with every intention of putting up the files and closing the sketch pad, I had to just take one last moment to tweak this one drawing and before I knew it, it was 4:00 and the phone was ringing again.
“Mo-o-o-o-o-o-m!”
And that was on a quiet day.
Jude always tells me not to call her between 3:00 and 5:00 because that’s peak cell phone time, and I don’t mean going over her allotted plan minutes. It’s because the phone becomes an addi¬tional appendage during those hours just after the kids get out of school. It never ends, a constant ringing. Either it’s to pick one of them up, drop two of them off, one of them is going to be late, can this one stay at a friend’s house, where are you, what’s for dinner, and on, and on.
I know most moms know what I’m talking about. We aren’t special because we are raising families and working. Most of the adult population does the same things. It’s an energy thing with Jude and me—maintaining the energy to work long hard days and to give that same level of intensity to our families.
Both of us are naturally high-energy people, so that’s an obvious plus; but we also eat right, exercise and, most of the time, get enough sleep. If your activities involve love or, and passion, as in love for your children, love for your work, then it isn’t difficult to keep your energy levels high. The work is what energizes you.
Now that we’ve told you what wonderful parents we are, let me share some more of our disasters with you.
I used to be ashamed to admit this. Now, I’m just embarrassed. When we were first starting to thrive as a business, there were times when I actually forgot to feed Charlotte and Rich.
Technically, they didn’t go hungry; each of them was old enough to open a can of soup, there were always plenty of snacks in the cupboard, and usually there was a housekeeper or a friend to look after them—but I always took pride in making a home¬cooked meal and having us share dinner together. At least that way, we always had one hour out of the day where I could listen to what they were doing in school, what their day was like, or what they were doing in soccer.
After a while however, and after I’d been forgiven many times by my kids, I just resolved that as a parent and a businesswoman, I was going to suffer guilt. I just had to learn to deal with it because as a mother, I knew it wasn’t going to go away.
There were times, after we’d landed the Manheim’s account that both families sat down together in the living room and filled and wrapped boxes together for Fed Ex shipments. It was, and still is, a very small business enterprise, despite our growing success.
The kids would be wrapping packages and Jude and I would be putting press kits together on the dining room table, while answering phones and fixing dinner for all seven of us.
One incident that has stayed with me, was just such an evening, or rather a weekend that began with that kind of evening. The children had stayed up until midnight with us, wrapping boxes and putting Fed Ex labels on them. We’d finished our press kits and fixed dinner and at about 2:00 a.m., Jude and I collapsed, me in my bed, she on the couch. We had an early morning flight to visit two of the Manheim’s stores over the weekend—one in Dallas, the other in Chicago.
We knew we had to be back by Monday to see my daughter’s performance, her first in a school play. She had the lead and she was petrified. I had promised her that nothing would keep me away—nothing, that’d I’d be right there front row center to boost her confidence and courage. She clung to those words like a sailor thrown overboard in the North Atlantic clings to a life raft.
Our early morning flight from Chicago stopped in Phoenix en route back to Orange County airport and we had to switch planes, but there was a two-hour wait for the second plane. Just before that flight was about to start boarding, I reached into my purse to get my driver’s license and my wallet was gone again.
There was no way I was going to get on a plane without ID, so although I was frantic, I figured it must have fallen out on the previous plane. I asked the ticket agent to call America West in Phoenix where the previous plane was returning. Sure enough, one of the attendants had found it and was kind enough to put it on yet another flight coming to Orange County. The time it took that final plane to return meant it would impossible to get home on time.
When I finally got home, it was past 8:00 and there was Charlotte sitting at the dining room table. The moment I saw her, my heart filled my chest. I dropped my bags and begged for for¬giveness.
“Oh, honey. I am so sorry. So very, very sorry. I lost my wallet,” I began and before I could catch the words and take them back, they’d already flown out of my mouth—irretrievable. What a feeble excuse, I thought.
She turned her head to me slowly and I could see her eyes filled with these enormous tears that were cascading down her cheeks. She simply said, “Again?” Then she turned and ran out of the room.
I will never live long enough to forget that failure. More guilt. Tons and tons of guilt. I wanted to run into my bathroom and cry.
The one good thing that came out of that was my promise not to make promises I couldn’t keep. From that point on, if there was a chance we’d be late or stuck somewhere, which was always a dis¬tinct possibility, I let them know ahead of time. In fact, every time we travel, I tell them that as a matter of course we might not catch a return flight and be home on schedule. That way, they’re not sur¬prised and not so disappointed. I always get a backup in the wings, just in case. I tell them that Mary or the housekeeper, Estelle, is going to pick them up instead of me if I’m late.
I know it sounds simple, but believe me my kids feel much safer and are not as disappointed when they already know the score. If they know what to expect, even if that means Aunt Mary’s coming instead of Mom, they’re okay with it, for the most part. At least, they’re not surprised.
In addition, we began to plan our trips as much as possible around the kids’ schedules instead of the other way around. I don’t mean that we plan business trips around a soccer match, just the really important stuff.
That was the beginning of a whole new relationship with our children. And I realized it was all about respect—respect for their time and feelings as much as for ours.
It wasn’t easy. Part of our exclusive with Manheim’s was our responsibility to visit every one of their stores, where we had our merchandise, twice a year. At the time, that was 20 trips around the country, in addition to the trade shows we attended every year, some more than once.
“Oh honey. I’m so sorry,” I begged back, “I just got so wrapped up in this order, I completely forgot.”
Unfortunately, I had far too many conversations like that with my son. With the advent of the Manheim’s account, our business was really exploding and there were so many things to accomplish every day. I was so absorbed in it that I would completely forget to pick up the kids from school, or an upcoming recital, or a soccer match—the list is practically endless.
That particular day, I had promised my son Rich I would pick him up after soccer practice at 3:00 sharp. At 2:45, I was totally immersed in some new designs and at the same time I was trying to figure out several screwed up invoices.
I knew from my days as an interior designer, that when you love what you’re doing, you become oblivious to the world around you. That’s the nature of the feeling. It’s very much like when we’re children, playing with dolls or toy soldiers, creating our own world or characters and dialogue, and Mom calls out that it’s time for dinner. But you never hear her and after the third time, she comes storming into the bedroom and berates you for not listening. You simply did not hear her, or anything else going on around you.
Unfortunately, as we grow into adults, we lose that ability to get lost in play. Everything becomes serious and important. However, for those of us who are blessed to be able to make a living at the thing that is play for us, we can still enjoy those feelings and like the grown boys who are paid well to play baseball or football or what¬ever game it is they enjoy—we can have fun doing it.
That’s why I’ve told my two children, and I know Jude has told her three, that one of the most important things in life is to find out what it is you love. My daughter loves animals. She might become a veterinarian, but then again, she might just open her own shelter for the unwanted and take care of them and find them good homes and never make more than a rudimentary living—but she’ll be loving every minute of it.
At any rate, not to make excuses, but that day, and many others, when I told Rich I’d pick him up at three, I meant it. Then, when he called at 3:25 wondering where I was, I was mortified. I’d fallen into the hypnosis of my play. I apologized profusely and told him I’d be there in five minutes. Then I hung up the phone and with every intention of putting up the files and closing the sketch pad, I had to just take one last moment to tweak this one drawing and before I knew it, it was 4:00 and the phone was ringing again.
“Mo-o-o-o-o-o-m!”
And that was on a quiet day.
Jude always tells me not to call her between 3:00 and 5:00 because that’s peak cell phone time, and I don’t mean going over her allotted plan minutes. It’s because the phone becomes an addi¬tional appendage during those hours just after the kids get out of school. It never ends, a constant ringing. Either it’s to pick one of them up, drop two of them off, one of them is going to be late, can this one stay at a friend’s house, where are you, what’s for dinner, and on, and on.
I know most moms know what I’m talking about. We aren’t special because we are raising families and working. Most of the adult population does the same things. It’s an energy thing with Jude and me—maintaining the energy to work long hard days and to give that same level of intensity to our families.
Both of us are naturally high-energy people, so that’s an obvious plus; but we also eat right, exercise and, most of the time, get enough sleep. If your activities involve love or, and passion, as in love for your children, love for your work, then it isn’t difficult to keep your energy levels high. The work is what energizes you.
Now that we’ve told you what wonderful parents we are, let me share some more of our disasters with you.
I used to be ashamed to admit this. Now, I’m just embarrassed. When we were first starting to thrive as a business, there were times when I actually forgot to feed Charlotte and Rich.
Technically, they didn’t go hungry; each of them was old enough to open a can of soup, there were always plenty of snacks in the cupboard, and usually there was a housekeeper or a friend to look after them—but I always took pride in making a home¬cooked meal and having us share dinner together. At least that way, we always had one hour out of the day where I could listen to what they were doing in school, what their day was like, or what they were doing in soccer.
After a while however, and after I’d been forgiven many times by my kids, I just resolved that as a parent and a businesswoman, I was going to suffer guilt. I just had to learn to deal with it because as a mother, I knew it wasn’t going to go away.
There were times, after we’d landed the Manheim’s account that both families sat down together in the living room and filled and wrapped boxes together for Fed Ex shipments. It was, and still is, a very small business enterprise, despite our growing success.
The kids would be wrapping packages and Jude and I would be putting press kits together on the dining room table, while answering phones and fixing dinner for all seven of us.
One incident that has stayed with me, was just such an evening, or rather a weekend that began with that kind of evening. The children had stayed up until midnight with us, wrapping boxes and putting Fed Ex labels on them. We’d finished our press kits and fixed dinner and at about 2:00 a.m., Jude and I collapsed, me in my bed, she on the couch. We had an early morning flight to visit two of the Manheim’s stores over the weekend—one in Dallas, the other in Chicago.
We knew we had to be back by Monday to see my daughter’s performance, her first in a school play. She had the lead and she was petrified. I had promised her that nothing would keep me away—nothing, that’d I’d be right there front row center to boost her confidence and courage. She clung to those words like a sailor thrown overboard in the North Atlantic clings to a life raft.
Our early morning flight from Chicago stopped in Phoenix en route back to Orange County airport and we had to switch planes, but there was a two-hour wait for the second plane. Just before that flight was about to start boarding, I reached into my purse to get my driver’s license and my wallet was gone again.
There was no way I was going to get on a plane without ID, so although I was frantic, I figured it must have fallen out on the previous plane. I asked the ticket agent to call America West in Phoenix where the previous plane was returning. Sure enough, one of the attendants had found it and was kind enough to put it on yet another flight coming to Orange County. The time it took that final plane to return meant it would impossible to get home on time.
When I finally got home, it was past 8:00 and there was Charlotte sitting at the dining room table. The moment I saw her, my heart filled my chest. I dropped my bags and begged for for¬giveness.
“Oh, honey. I am so sorry. So very, very sorry. I lost my wallet,” I began and before I could catch the words and take them back, they’d already flown out of my mouth—irretrievable. What a feeble excuse, I thought.
She turned her head to me slowly and I could see her eyes filled with these enormous tears that were cascading down her cheeks. She simply said, “Again?” Then she turned and ran out of the room.
I will never live long enough to forget that failure. More guilt. Tons and tons of guilt. I wanted to run into my bathroom and cry.
The one good thing that came out of that was my promise not to make promises I couldn’t keep. From that point on, if there was a chance we’d be late or stuck somewhere, which was always a dis¬tinct possibility, I let them know ahead of time. In fact, every time we travel, I tell them that as a matter of course we might not catch a return flight and be home on schedule. That way, they’re not sur¬prised and not so disappointed. I always get a backup in the wings, just in case. I tell them that Mary or the housekeeper, Estelle, is going to pick them up instead of me if I’m late.
I know it sounds simple, but believe me my kids feel much safer and are not as disappointed when they already know the score. If they know what to expect, even if that means Aunt Mary’s coming instead of Mom, they’re okay with it, for the most part. At least, they’re not surprised.
In addition, we began to plan our trips as much as possible around the kids’ schedules instead of the other way around. I don’t mean that we plan business trips around a soccer match, just the really important stuff.
That was the beginning of a whole new relationship with our children. And I realized it was all about respect—respect for their time and feelings as much as for ours.
It wasn’t easy. Part of our exclusive with Manheim’s was our responsibility to visit every one of their stores, where we had our merchandise, twice a year. At the time, that was 20 trips around the country, in addition to the trade shows we attended every year, some more than once.
Chapter 10-The Great Brinks Truck Caper and the Benevolent Buyer
JANUAR Y 2003 ST AR TED off more like a spiritual Fourth of July. Jude had spent the previous month researching all the trade shows that the retail buyers attended, all of which were very expensive.
She determined that the top two were The JA Show in New York’s Jacob Javitz Center, held in January and July of each year, and the JCK Show held in June in Las Vegas.
Just before the JCK Show there is another, smaller event, not as important, but certainly worth attending, called The Luxury Show at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. In fact, The Luxury and JCK Shows pretty much run concurrently from Tuesday through Sunday.
We decided to shoot for the moon, so we attended them all in 2003, including The JA Show Shows, which are not easy to get into. Jude called everyday and sent numerous baskets of cookies and candy.
The JA Show is one of the largest and most important of the year for the industry. It was our first time and we had no idea what to expect and we were extremely lucky to even get in. There is a 10-year waiting list, but Jude used her charm and persistence to finally talk them into giving us a booth that was a last-minute cancellation.
Unfortunately, that booth, though it cost $10,000, was right by the bathroom, and we were thinking this isn’t exactly in a high traffic area. And so we were worried—worried about whether our promotion would work, and concerned that we’d be too far away from where the real action was, which was the special designer sec¬tion located upstairs, where all the big names were located.
As it turned out, we had nothing to worry about. Being next to the bathroom turned out to be a huge plus, because, guess what? Everyone has to go to the bathroom. On top of that, Jude’s promo¬tion was a giant success. We sold $75,000 worth of merchandise, a mild success. We could have done much worse: Considering the cost of the shows, some of the smaller booths run as much as $25,000, and the booths the major players put up, which can be 30-feet long, run in the hundreds of thousands.
So the JA was certainly worth the effort and we learned a lot. However, the comical part of what is usually just another pratfall for us was, as usual, the getting there. We were flying out of L.A. this time and as usual, even though I claim to be the most organ¬ized person this side of a reference librarian, I lost my cell phone, the one with 10 years worth of contacts safely filed within. The one I can’t live without.
I have to admit, looking back it really wasn’t my lack of orga¬nizational skills as much as the amount of work we put in as we sit in airport lounges.
New York | Our First Trade Show
We would usually shove two of those tiny tables together. On one sat our customary baskets of Buffalo wings, a margarita, and a pile of napkins. On the other were two laptops, a small calcu¬lator, and several files. On the floor at our feet were two open briefcases, usually filled with marketing materials, notes, a map or two, our Palm Pilots, a handful of energy bars, and pictures of our kids. And, in many cases, the ubiquitous box filled with jewelry, usually the size of a shoebox, which I always secured by wrapping my feet around it. I figured if by some very long stretch of the imagination, someone tried to surreptitiously reach under there to grab it, I would most certainly see the perpetrator, if not feel him.
During these long waits, Jude and I would do a wrap up of the show or meeting we’d just been to as well as brainstorm new ideas based on those experiences. In short, we were usually lost in play, with papers falling onto the floor, talking as loudly as we did in our offices, calculating sales figures, all the while oblivious of the time.
On this particular occasion, we were also very excited about our first appearance at the JA Show, so we were celebrating a little. Since we are two pretty congenial types, the bartender took a shine to us and tried to ply us with liquor to get our phone numbers.
They called our flight and we paid the tab and headed off in the general direction of Concourse B. When we got there I reached for my phone to check on the children but I couldn’t find it.
The plane was going to board in about 15 minutes, and once again, I had all the contents of my purse out on the floor. When I still couldn’t find it, I panicked and told Jude, “Wait here. I’ll be right back. I’m pretty sure I left it on the table in the bar,” and with that, I was off, running through the airport, back the quarter of a mile or so to the bar.
I knew that Jude was worried I wouldn’t make it back in time. Ten minutes went by, then 15. I knew they would start calling for the back rows any minute. We were in row 10. When I couldn’t find it at the bar, I had no choice but to start the run back to the gate. When I got closer, Jude was waving at me with both arms, a cell phone in each hand. She’d picked up my phone thinking it was hers.
I wanted to strangle her, but as we fastened our seat belts she made a remark about how we might just have invented the next big diet or inventive exercise regimen. We would make a video and a bloody fortune showing people how they could tone up and trim down using the JudeFrances I-lost-my-cell-phone-but-that’s-okay-because-I-can’t-tell-my-seat-number-from-the-terminal-number aerobics workout, not exactly Jane Fonda, but sure to melt the pounds.
Fortunately, I still managed to make it to my son Rich’s after¬noon soccer game, which was more important than it sounds. At the time, he was a freshman in high school and already he was an accomplished soccer player, having played at the highest level since 3rd grade. His big wish was to go on to play in college and then with the pros.
It had been rumored there would be a college scout in the bleachers that day and I wanted to share that excitement with him.
IN ADDITION TO a decent showing in New York, and with the two successful trunk shows behind us, Doris had signed us up in five of the 29 Manheim stores. Actually, at first she offered us only two, but since we had already met with another high-end retailer in Dallas called Horshack’s, which had been expressing a strong interest in our line, I felt emboldened to have this conversation with Doris.
Doris:Well, Frances. You did well. We are proud to offer you two locations to begin selling your line on an exclusive basis.
Frances:Uh, well, thank you for your confidence, and we are absolutely thrilled about it all. However, in all honesty, we have also met with Horshack’s and they really want our line as well (which was a bald-face lie. They liked it, but hadn’t offered anything).
Doris:Oh. Hummm.
Frances:God, now I’ve gone and screwed it all up. Why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut?
Doris:Okay, Frances. We’ll give you five stores. But that’s an exclusive, understood?
Frances:Yes-s-s-s-s ma’am! Whew!
Manheim’s first order was for $30,000 worth of jewelry for each store for a grand total of $150,000. If we had been paranoid about our first small Fed Ex shipment to Tassels…well, let’s just say that anxiety paled in comparison, and we only had two weeks to put it all together.
There was only one tiny problem that Doris had overlooked and we didn’t know about. All orders must be shipped to Dallas no later than the 31st of January so that they are on sale by mid-February. Doris called us on the 14th of January to order for all five stores.
Jude and I were scrambling. The deadline was nearly impos¬sible because we didn’t have that much ready-made inventory. So, between me racing into Los Angeles to prod and beg our manufac¬turer, and Jude trying to photograph every single piece for insurance—not to mention taking care of all five of the kids, it was like hell week at the Navy Seal school.
One thing we had learned from a very kind woman who was head of shipping for Manheim’s who had befriended us (for rea¬sons still unknown), was that all the high-end retailers were very, very specific about how they received their merchandise and how it was documented.
My first phone conversation with her went like this:
“Now, honey. Which one are you, Jude or Frances? Ya’ll look identical. Hell, all you California girls look alike (laughs all around). Just kiddin’ honey.”
“Hi, Marley. I’m Frances, the tall one with the English accent.”
“Oh yes darlin’. How could I forget? Well, listen up good now, ya hear?
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When I was the head of shippin’ at Macy’s they did the same thing.”
“What’s that, Marley?”
“Well, if your documents didn’t match your shipment, they’d ding ya.”
“What do you mean, ding ya?”
“I mean they would charge back.”
“Huh?”
“Any time there was a mistake, like the wrong bill of lading, or an invoice was missin’, or a P.O. number was wrong….ding, ding, ding would go the cash register. Each charge-back would be like a sort a financial demerit—$100 a piece to be exact.”
“The shame of it was, some folks actually ended up with higher charge-backs than the amount they were chargin’ for their goods. Just a shame.”
“Oh, thank you, Marley. I’ll be sure we dot all our ts and cross all our is.”
“Sweetie, I think you got that backwards. At any rate, make sure you ship it all by the thirty-first.”
“Yes, ma’am. And thank you for all your help.”
MARLEY WENT ON TO BE our patron saint. We must have called her 20 times a day during those two weeks. Jude and I, and even all the children pitched in to count each piece, which we must have done 10 times, each time with a different count.
Jude took four or five photos of each after we’d finally settled on the count, and then we all put the shipments neatly into special boxes with little compartments. We were at the height of paranoia because this shipment represented every piece we owned, not to mention our entire future with Manheim’s.
It gets worse.
Normally, most vendors ship with Fed Ex and insure their mer¬chandise for more than it’s worth and, of course, then have the piece of mind that the good old Fed Ex tracking number provides, should anything actually get lost.
THA T W ASN’T GOOD ENOUGH for us. We wanted an armored car to take our shipment. That’s right, a Brinks truck. One with all those guards inside with 3-inches of bulletproof glass and a machine-gun turret on top.
I was in charge of shipping so when we were completely satis¬fied we’d satisfied Manheim’s strictest requirements (and had put our jewelry boxes inside a U-Haul box that we put into yet another larger U-Haul box and then used five rolls of duct tape to secure it all), we put it in the trunk of my car, locked it, got inside, locked the doors, rolled up the windows and got on the freeway into L.A.
During the entire ride from Newport Beach into the bowels of downtown Los Angeles, Jude was staring in the rearview mirror and I was looking out all sides of the car for any felonious types who might be following us. Our paranoia had overtaken us, and with good cause—this wasn’t the nice modern, clean, urban envi¬ronment you used to see on L.A. Law. This was the jewelry district, not unlike the garment district a few blocks away—seedy, old, run-down, with plenty of homeless people sleeping under bus benches and off ramp overpasses, others next to piles of wine bot¬tles. And then there were the gang members who loitered on every other corner. There were no nice hotels or restaurants, or police substations in this neighborhood.
God knows why one of the world’s largest armored car com¬panies has an office in this area, I thought.
When we got to the Brinks gates, Jude stayed in the locked car close to their front door and I went inside to find out how to bring our precious cargo in. Looking back over my shoulder, I could see her head bobbing and weaving, her eyes barely visible above the door, looking in each direction over and over again.
I was told to go around to the back to see the intake personnel. I went back out to the car to retrieve Jude and the box and then we both carried it to the back, to the man behind the cage.
He started to hand us the receipt, but neither of us would let loose of the box and when the man reached out to grab it, we still clung on until he said, “Ladies, I can’t ship this for you if you won’t let go of it. Trust us. We’re Brinks. We’re not going to lose your cargo. We’ve never lost anything.”
Of course, in all the consternation, we forgot to insure it after all. But that didn’t occur to us until we got to New York a couple of days later. It was Jude’s birthday and we were going to party in the Big Apple to celebrate both her birthday and our successful first shipment.
Once we got there, we immediately called Marley in Shipping, just to make sure our U-Haul box had arrived as planned on January 30th. It hadn’t. I began to feel small beads of sweat in my palms. Neither of us could sleep all night. In fact—it was lost, not by Manheim’s but by Brinks, the people who never lose anything.
A wave of nausea overcame me when I finally spoke with the man in Brink’s Shipping. It seemed this response to stress was becoming more and more frequent.
Between the frantic calls to Marley, who didn’t help by telling us nothing like this had ever happened, and Brinks, who continued to tell us this was a first, we were both on the phone constantly for the next two days. Eventually, Brinks did find and deliver our ship¬ment, but not before both of us went through more anxiety than I ever want to experience again.
We had both agreed from the very beginning that Doris was a bit scattered, and we confirmed it when about 10 days after the store finally received the shipment we received a check for our invoice.
Our invoice had been for $150,000. With our credit cards maxed out, we breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the Manheim logo in the upper left hand corner of the envelope and the company name JFJ, LLC, in the window, which invariably means a check or a bill.
However, there were two problems. The first one came when I saw the JFJ name and address. As you’ll recall, we never did change that initial stationery that we had so much fun designing and printing, even after being told it would conflict with Jean Francois’ company name and even after we’d started our corpora¬tion and bank account in the name of JudeFrances Jewelry.
I felt a momentary flush of anxiety, but I dismissed it in my fervor to open the envelope and see our first really big check. And it was really big—too big. Jude and I both gasped when we read the amount: $250,000! Manheim’s had overpaid us by $100,000! It was like looking at a winning lotto ticket—that belonged to someone else.
My first thought was: What if Manheim’s thinks we cheated them, or somehow had stolen their money? Had Loraine made the invoice out for this amount? Knowing her I didn’t think that was possible, but after a quick look in the file, I saw that the invoice was indeed for the original $150,000 sale no more, no less.
Within minutes, I was on the phone with Doris telling her about her mistake. She hadn’t seen it that way. She’d intended, with a full heart, to help us. We couldn’t believe it and neither of us were satisfied with her generosity. It just wasn’t right and it made both of us uncomfortable.
I began calling the accounting office in Dallas every day, trying to get someone to listen to me and to get some instructions as to what to do—send back the check and chance waiting a month for the next payment cycle to get the correct amount, or deposit it and then send them a check for the difference.
Believe it or not, no one had an answer and so, ultimately, at Doris’ insistence, we went to the bank with the entire $250,000.
Now, if this were anyone else’s story that would have been the happy ending to a fairy tale—but not so with us.
When I finally went to the bank to deposit the check, the teller wouldn’t take it; neither would the manager. After all, it wasn’t made out to our company: JudeFrances Jewelry. It was made out to our stationery: JFJ, LLC.
I pleaded with the woman, pointing out the similarities.
“See. JFJ. That stands for JudeFrances Jewelry. Get it? JFJ,” I told the manager. “I guess the accountant person was just a little lazy and wrote out our company initials instead of the entire name,” I continued.
She wasn’t buying it and I suppose had it been a thousand dol¬lars or so, they would have let us deposit it with my explanation; but since it was a quarter of a million, she rightfully told us to get one made out to our company.
Here we were with a windfall that we couldn’t touch and the Visa bills were due in a day. Thankfully, we had—and still have— the most fantastic business attorney. Through some legal miracle, he was able to change our business name with the bank within days, and we made the deposit.
There we sat with our newfound fortune. We were safely out of the woods with Manheim’s accounting office, and we had paid all our bills. This was truly a gift from above; it was the one mon¬umental moment that changed our lives.
Even after we’d had our stellar first half-year, no bank would lend us any money. They all wanted a minimum of two years worth of operating statements and taxes. But we’d effectively just secured an unsecured $100,000 loan with no collateral, which also had no pay-back date. Can you imagine? Manheim’s was, effectively, our largest client, investment banker, and benefactor.
That money was our marketing and operating capital for the next 18 months. How did we pay it back? We simply deducted a set amount from each shipment until it was finally used up. If the shipment amounted to $150,000, then we billed them $150,000 minus a $5,000 credit against the overpayment.
Truly amazing.
She determined that the top two were The JA Show in New York’s Jacob Javitz Center, held in January and July of each year, and the JCK Show held in June in Las Vegas.
Just before the JCK Show there is another, smaller event, not as important, but certainly worth attending, called The Luxury Show at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. In fact, The Luxury and JCK Shows pretty much run concurrently from Tuesday through Sunday.
We decided to shoot for the moon, so we attended them all in 2003, including The JA Show Shows, which are not easy to get into. Jude called everyday and sent numerous baskets of cookies and candy.
The JA Show is one of the largest and most important of the year for the industry. It was our first time and we had no idea what to expect and we were extremely lucky to even get in. There is a 10-year waiting list, but Jude used her charm and persistence to finally talk them into giving us a booth that was a last-minute cancellation.
Unfortunately, that booth, though it cost $10,000, was right by the bathroom, and we were thinking this isn’t exactly in a high traffic area. And so we were worried—worried about whether our promotion would work, and concerned that we’d be too far away from where the real action was, which was the special designer sec¬tion located upstairs, where all the big names were located.
As it turned out, we had nothing to worry about. Being next to the bathroom turned out to be a huge plus, because, guess what? Everyone has to go to the bathroom. On top of that, Jude’s promo¬tion was a giant success. We sold $75,000 worth of merchandise, a mild success. We could have done much worse: Considering the cost of the shows, some of the smaller booths run as much as $25,000, and the booths the major players put up, which can be 30-feet long, run in the hundreds of thousands.
So the JA was certainly worth the effort and we learned a lot. However, the comical part of what is usually just another pratfall for us was, as usual, the getting there. We were flying out of L.A. this time and as usual, even though I claim to be the most organ¬ized person this side of a reference librarian, I lost my cell phone, the one with 10 years worth of contacts safely filed within. The one I can’t live without.
I have to admit, looking back it really wasn’t my lack of orga¬nizational skills as much as the amount of work we put in as we sit in airport lounges.
New York | Our First Trade Show
We would usually shove two of those tiny tables together. On one sat our customary baskets of Buffalo wings, a margarita, and a pile of napkins. On the other were two laptops, a small calcu¬lator, and several files. On the floor at our feet were two open briefcases, usually filled with marketing materials, notes, a map or two, our Palm Pilots, a handful of energy bars, and pictures of our kids. And, in many cases, the ubiquitous box filled with jewelry, usually the size of a shoebox, which I always secured by wrapping my feet around it. I figured if by some very long stretch of the imagination, someone tried to surreptitiously reach under there to grab it, I would most certainly see the perpetrator, if not feel him.
During these long waits, Jude and I would do a wrap up of the show or meeting we’d just been to as well as brainstorm new ideas based on those experiences. In short, we were usually lost in play, with papers falling onto the floor, talking as loudly as we did in our offices, calculating sales figures, all the while oblivious of the time.
On this particular occasion, we were also very excited about our first appearance at the JA Show, so we were celebrating a little. Since we are two pretty congenial types, the bartender took a shine to us and tried to ply us with liquor to get our phone numbers.
They called our flight and we paid the tab and headed off in the general direction of Concourse B. When we got there I reached for my phone to check on the children but I couldn’t find it.
The plane was going to board in about 15 minutes, and once again, I had all the contents of my purse out on the floor. When I still couldn’t find it, I panicked and told Jude, “Wait here. I’ll be right back. I’m pretty sure I left it on the table in the bar,” and with that, I was off, running through the airport, back the quarter of a mile or so to the bar.
I knew that Jude was worried I wouldn’t make it back in time. Ten minutes went by, then 15. I knew they would start calling for the back rows any minute. We were in row 10. When I couldn’t find it at the bar, I had no choice but to start the run back to the gate. When I got closer, Jude was waving at me with both arms, a cell phone in each hand. She’d picked up my phone thinking it was hers.
I wanted to strangle her, but as we fastened our seat belts she made a remark about how we might just have invented the next big diet or inventive exercise regimen. We would make a video and a bloody fortune showing people how they could tone up and trim down using the JudeFrances I-lost-my-cell-phone-but-that’s-okay-because-I-can’t-tell-my-seat-number-from-the-terminal-number aerobics workout, not exactly Jane Fonda, but sure to melt the pounds.
Fortunately, I still managed to make it to my son Rich’s after¬noon soccer game, which was more important than it sounds. At the time, he was a freshman in high school and already he was an accomplished soccer player, having played at the highest level since 3rd grade. His big wish was to go on to play in college and then with the pros.
It had been rumored there would be a college scout in the bleachers that day and I wanted to share that excitement with him.
IN ADDITION TO a decent showing in New York, and with the two successful trunk shows behind us, Doris had signed us up in five of the 29 Manheim stores. Actually, at first she offered us only two, but since we had already met with another high-end retailer in Dallas called Horshack’s, which had been expressing a strong interest in our line, I felt emboldened to have this conversation with Doris.
Doris:Well, Frances. You did well. We are proud to offer you two locations to begin selling your line on an exclusive basis.
Frances:Uh, well, thank you for your confidence, and we are absolutely thrilled about it all. However, in all honesty, we have also met with Horshack’s and they really want our line as well (which was a bald-face lie. They liked it, but hadn’t offered anything).
Doris:Oh. Hummm.
Frances:God, now I’ve gone and screwed it all up. Why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut?
Doris:Okay, Frances. We’ll give you five stores. But that’s an exclusive, understood?
Frances:Yes-s-s-s-s ma’am! Whew!
Manheim’s first order was for $30,000 worth of jewelry for each store for a grand total of $150,000. If we had been paranoid about our first small Fed Ex shipment to Tassels…well, let’s just say that anxiety paled in comparison, and we only had two weeks to put it all together.
There was only one tiny problem that Doris had overlooked and we didn’t know about. All orders must be shipped to Dallas no later than the 31st of January so that they are on sale by mid-February. Doris called us on the 14th of January to order for all five stores.
Jude and I were scrambling. The deadline was nearly impos¬sible because we didn’t have that much ready-made inventory. So, between me racing into Los Angeles to prod and beg our manufac¬turer, and Jude trying to photograph every single piece for insurance—not to mention taking care of all five of the kids, it was like hell week at the Navy Seal school.
One thing we had learned from a very kind woman who was head of shipping for Manheim’s who had befriended us (for rea¬sons still unknown), was that all the high-end retailers were very, very specific about how they received their merchandise and how it was documented.
My first phone conversation with her went like this:
“Now, honey. Which one are you, Jude or Frances? Ya’ll look identical. Hell, all you California girls look alike (laughs all around). Just kiddin’ honey.”
“Hi, Marley. I’m Frances, the tall one with the English accent.”
“Oh yes darlin’. How could I forget? Well, listen up good now, ya hear?
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When I was the head of shippin’ at Macy’s they did the same thing.”
“What’s that, Marley?”
“Well, if your documents didn’t match your shipment, they’d ding ya.”
“What do you mean, ding ya?”
“I mean they would charge back.”
“Huh?”
“Any time there was a mistake, like the wrong bill of lading, or an invoice was missin’, or a P.O. number was wrong….ding, ding, ding would go the cash register. Each charge-back would be like a sort a financial demerit—$100 a piece to be exact.”
“The shame of it was, some folks actually ended up with higher charge-backs than the amount they were chargin’ for their goods. Just a shame.”
“Oh, thank you, Marley. I’ll be sure we dot all our ts and cross all our is.”
“Sweetie, I think you got that backwards. At any rate, make sure you ship it all by the thirty-first.”
“Yes, ma’am. And thank you for all your help.”
MARLEY WENT ON TO BE our patron saint. We must have called her 20 times a day during those two weeks. Jude and I, and even all the children pitched in to count each piece, which we must have done 10 times, each time with a different count.
Jude took four or five photos of each after we’d finally settled on the count, and then we all put the shipments neatly into special boxes with little compartments. We were at the height of paranoia because this shipment represented every piece we owned, not to mention our entire future with Manheim’s.
It gets worse.
Normally, most vendors ship with Fed Ex and insure their mer¬chandise for more than it’s worth and, of course, then have the piece of mind that the good old Fed Ex tracking number provides, should anything actually get lost.
THA T W ASN’T GOOD ENOUGH for us. We wanted an armored car to take our shipment. That’s right, a Brinks truck. One with all those guards inside with 3-inches of bulletproof glass and a machine-gun turret on top.
I was in charge of shipping so when we were completely satis¬fied we’d satisfied Manheim’s strictest requirements (and had put our jewelry boxes inside a U-Haul box that we put into yet another larger U-Haul box and then used five rolls of duct tape to secure it all), we put it in the trunk of my car, locked it, got inside, locked the doors, rolled up the windows and got on the freeway into L.A.
During the entire ride from Newport Beach into the bowels of downtown Los Angeles, Jude was staring in the rearview mirror and I was looking out all sides of the car for any felonious types who might be following us. Our paranoia had overtaken us, and with good cause—this wasn’t the nice modern, clean, urban envi¬ronment you used to see on L.A. Law. This was the jewelry district, not unlike the garment district a few blocks away—seedy, old, run-down, with plenty of homeless people sleeping under bus benches and off ramp overpasses, others next to piles of wine bot¬tles. And then there were the gang members who loitered on every other corner. There were no nice hotels or restaurants, or police substations in this neighborhood.
God knows why one of the world’s largest armored car com¬panies has an office in this area, I thought.
When we got to the Brinks gates, Jude stayed in the locked car close to their front door and I went inside to find out how to bring our precious cargo in. Looking back over my shoulder, I could see her head bobbing and weaving, her eyes barely visible above the door, looking in each direction over and over again.
I was told to go around to the back to see the intake personnel. I went back out to the car to retrieve Jude and the box and then we both carried it to the back, to the man behind the cage.
He started to hand us the receipt, but neither of us would let loose of the box and when the man reached out to grab it, we still clung on until he said, “Ladies, I can’t ship this for you if you won’t let go of it. Trust us. We’re Brinks. We’re not going to lose your cargo. We’ve never lost anything.”
Of course, in all the consternation, we forgot to insure it after all. But that didn’t occur to us until we got to New York a couple of days later. It was Jude’s birthday and we were going to party in the Big Apple to celebrate both her birthday and our successful first shipment.
Once we got there, we immediately called Marley in Shipping, just to make sure our U-Haul box had arrived as planned on January 30th. It hadn’t. I began to feel small beads of sweat in my palms. Neither of us could sleep all night. In fact—it was lost, not by Manheim’s but by Brinks, the people who never lose anything.
A wave of nausea overcame me when I finally spoke with the man in Brink’s Shipping. It seemed this response to stress was becoming more and more frequent.
Between the frantic calls to Marley, who didn’t help by telling us nothing like this had ever happened, and Brinks, who continued to tell us this was a first, we were both on the phone constantly for the next two days. Eventually, Brinks did find and deliver our ship¬ment, but not before both of us went through more anxiety than I ever want to experience again.
We had both agreed from the very beginning that Doris was a bit scattered, and we confirmed it when about 10 days after the store finally received the shipment we received a check for our invoice.
Our invoice had been for $150,000. With our credit cards maxed out, we breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the Manheim logo in the upper left hand corner of the envelope and the company name JFJ, LLC, in the window, which invariably means a check or a bill.
However, there were two problems. The first one came when I saw the JFJ name and address. As you’ll recall, we never did change that initial stationery that we had so much fun designing and printing, even after being told it would conflict with Jean Francois’ company name and even after we’d started our corpora¬tion and bank account in the name of JudeFrances Jewelry.
I felt a momentary flush of anxiety, but I dismissed it in my fervor to open the envelope and see our first really big check. And it was really big—too big. Jude and I both gasped when we read the amount: $250,000! Manheim’s had overpaid us by $100,000! It was like looking at a winning lotto ticket—that belonged to someone else.
My first thought was: What if Manheim’s thinks we cheated them, or somehow had stolen their money? Had Loraine made the invoice out for this amount? Knowing her I didn’t think that was possible, but after a quick look in the file, I saw that the invoice was indeed for the original $150,000 sale no more, no less.
Within minutes, I was on the phone with Doris telling her about her mistake. She hadn’t seen it that way. She’d intended, with a full heart, to help us. We couldn’t believe it and neither of us were satisfied with her generosity. It just wasn’t right and it made both of us uncomfortable.
I began calling the accounting office in Dallas every day, trying to get someone to listen to me and to get some instructions as to what to do—send back the check and chance waiting a month for the next payment cycle to get the correct amount, or deposit it and then send them a check for the difference.
Believe it or not, no one had an answer and so, ultimately, at Doris’ insistence, we went to the bank with the entire $250,000.
Now, if this were anyone else’s story that would have been the happy ending to a fairy tale—but not so with us.
When I finally went to the bank to deposit the check, the teller wouldn’t take it; neither would the manager. After all, it wasn’t made out to our company: JudeFrances Jewelry. It was made out to our stationery: JFJ, LLC.
I pleaded with the woman, pointing out the similarities.
“See. JFJ. That stands for JudeFrances Jewelry. Get it? JFJ,” I told the manager. “I guess the accountant person was just a little lazy and wrote out our company initials instead of the entire name,” I continued.
She wasn’t buying it and I suppose had it been a thousand dol¬lars or so, they would have let us deposit it with my explanation; but since it was a quarter of a million, she rightfully told us to get one made out to our company.
Here we were with a windfall that we couldn’t touch and the Visa bills were due in a day. Thankfully, we had—and still have— the most fantastic business attorney. Through some legal miracle, he was able to change our business name with the bank within days, and we made the deposit.
There we sat with our newfound fortune. We were safely out of the woods with Manheim’s accounting office, and we had paid all our bills. This was truly a gift from above; it was the one mon¬umental moment that changed our lives.
Even after we’d had our stellar first half-year, no bank would lend us any money. They all wanted a minimum of two years worth of operating statements and taxes. But we’d effectively just secured an unsecured $100,000 loan with no collateral, which also had no pay-back date. Can you imagine? Manheim’s was, effectively, our largest client, investment banker, and benefactor.
That money was our marketing and operating capital for the next 18 months. How did we pay it back? We simply deducted a set amount from each shipment until it was finally used up. If the shipment amounted to $150,000, then we billed them $150,000 minus a $5,000 credit against the overpayment.
Truly amazing.
Chapter 9-The Tax Man Cometh
AS YOU READ EARLIER, Frances thinks of herself as a highly organized and detail-oriented person. In the beginning of our rela¬tionship, she was very emphatic: “I want to sit down and really organize; you know, I want us to know where our drivers’ licenses and our tickets are at all times. I want to be prepared. We’re going to be on tight schedules most of the time and I don’t want us to fumbling about and making fools of ourselves in airports.”
One of the reasons Frances wanted to be prepared and not fumble around was the fact that we were carrying around a fair amount of money’s worth of jewelry in a very basic box, essentially a makeup kit. For obvious reasons, we didn’t want to let it go with our baggage, so we always clutched the box as if we expected a mugging at any moment.
That said, during a one-day trunk show in Vegas a few weeks after our initial tryout, we met a sales rep from Michele Watches, a popular brand that Manheim already carried, and she was a doll—very helpful and friendly.
AFTER THE SHOW, WE P ACKED up our line and set about getting to the airport. When we stepped outside, it was pouring rain.
There was a line of people 50 deep trying to get taxis, as many of the people at the show were doing the same as us—trying to get home. It seemed interminable as slowly one or two cabs would arrive and whisk off one or two people.
Nearly 40 minutes had passed and we were still huddled under the store awning not far from the curb, and Frances and I were beginning to worry that we’d miss our flight. Just then the Michele rep we’d met came back to us from the front of the line and very kindly offered to share her cab. We were elated.
As we entered the airport and were heading toward the ter¬minal, Frances and I automatically began searching our immense purses for the fare—we both had the same thought simultane-ously—pick up the fare for all three of us—of course.
Frances was sitting up front with the driver and I shared the back seat with the kind woman from Michele. Frances was uptight. I can always tell when she’s uneasy by the way she twists her hair with one hand, and fumbles in her purse with the other. She’d emp¬tied half the contents onto the seat, including her wallet, and I knew, just like me, she didn’t have a dime to her name.
We were mortified. What would we say?
“Jude, do you have any money?” she asked with a mild, pan¬icky look on her face.
I picked at articles in my purse, mostly for effect, because I already knew I didn’t. “Uh, uh, I don’t think so.”
“Don’t worry, girls. I’ll take care of it,” said our benefactor. With that, we both just slumped humiliated, into the seats. A hun¬dred sorrys wouldn’t have soothed our embarrassment.
Traveling to shows requires not only the need for a days worth of clothing, the essential makeup and toiletries, etc., etc., but of course, we had to carry our jewelry line with us, all in one carry¬on bag. And now, we really were late, but we still felt a good run at it would save the day.
So here are these two women, one rather petite, the other rather tall, lugging their enormous purses and a far-too-large rolling bag through the airport at breakneck speed, bumping past people on the escalator, zigging and zagging their way to the ticket counter to get their boarding passes.
When we finally arrived, the kind Michele rep was standing in front of us in line. We nodded and smiled to her as she picked her boarding pass up and headed to the terminal.
We, on the other hand could not find our drivers’ licenses.
As the kind rep approached the escalator, she looked back to see us with our purses and the rolling bag open in front of the ticket counter with most of the contents splayed out on the floor.
We were both on our hands and knees rummaging through the mess and, of course, there were 50 people in line growing increas¬ingly angry. As I looked back up at the escalator, I saw the kind rep rising in the air with a look that simply said, What a couple of ditzes, though she did smile one last time—sort of.
“I thought you were the organized one,” I said to Frances.
“Don’t start.”
Finally, Frances found gold. Somewhere in the morass of her belongings, she discovered both our licenses and money—voila!
Before I could even look at her, she said, “Don’t say a word.”
We’d only survived half our adventure at that point. We still had to make the plane carrying the two heavy purses and the giant rolling case.
Off we went, running again, jumping past people on the esca¬lator, once again zigzagging through the throngs and in a short breathed panic we arrived at the security gate, which of course also had a long line waiting.
Frances was tapping her foot and I was chewing on a nail as we oh-so-slowly approached the X-ray machine. Once through the checkpoint, we raced to the first departure monitor frantically looking for the Orange County America West flight, hoping against all hope that it was still on the tarmac.
“Flight 321 has been delayed,” it read.
“Crap! I couldn’t believe it. After all that, the damned thing was delayed. Oh well, there is nothing left to do but to have a drink,” Frances said, as she turned and started toward the nearest bar without even saying another word to me.
It appeared we had enough time to imbibe one, so we sat in the bar drinking margaritas, which at that point tasted like a bit of heaven, and I pulled out the tickets.
“Which gate is it?” Frances asked.
“Hmm, looks like 36C,” I answered.
After a healthy margarita and a verbal reliving of the entire day, I walked out to the monitor to find the flight was back on— in fact, it was leaving in 15 minutes. Geeze, I thought, we’re still going to miss our flight! Funny how a harmless margarita can dis¬tort time.
Once again, we were off and running. She was carrying our two purses, which are more like large backpacks, and I was coming up the rear with an 80-pound rolling bag—the one that was far too big for the overhead and should hold only about 25 pounds of gear.
It was an aerobic moment to be sure. Actually, it was several aerobic moments until we arrived at the gate where we stood with our mouths open—nobody was there. There were no ticket takers, no passengers waiting reading papers—nobody.
“What the hell?” Frances said. “Jude, are you sure it’s 36C?”
“I’m pretty sure,” I answered, as I thrust my hand into my
purse to retrieve the tickets. “You’re ‘pretty’ sure?” she said. “Oh my gaw-w-w-wd,” I said. “It’s not 36C. It’s 36B. “Jude!” We began running off again in the opposite direction, racing to
the opposite side of the terminal. Half way there, I really thought I was running out of gas, but we managed to make it, just in time to see another completely empty gate—no ticket takers, no travelers.
“Damn! What in the hell is going on? Are we nuts?” Frances said. That’s when I pulled out the tickets again and gave them a more careful look.
Damn! It’s not gate 36B or C. It’s seats 36B and C. Frances is going to kill me.
“Uh, sweetie,” I said gently, “you’re not going to believe this.”
“Oh yes I will.”
“The 36B and C thing?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not the gate, it’s our…”
“Yes, go on, what is it?”
“Uh, uh, it’s our seats.”
“Wow. Are you kidding me? No, wait, don’t answer that,” she
said as she ran off to the monitors once again. “Come on,” she said as she grabbed one of the bags. “We can still make it.” And off I ran behind her.
By the time we finally arrived at the right gate, we’d done close to 2 miles of wind sprints through half the Las Vegas airport. As we were getting closer to the gate, we could hear that our flight number was making the last call.
In full-blown panic, we finally got to the ticket counter where
Las Vegas Trade Show
the agents were packing up and one of them is closing that door that leads down the ramp, and we all know what that means. If the door closes, we’re doomed. Even if for some reason that plane sits there for another half hour—after “the” door closes, we’re not going anywhere.
But we begged the agent as if this was a life or death situation, and she actually relented.
“But hurry,” she said, “Even if you get to the plane, if they close ‘the’ door, you won’t get in.”
We ran down the long ramp, still lugging the enormous bag and purses, and got to the plane just as the attendant was begin¬ning to close the door.
“Wait!” Frances yelled. “Wait!”
The attendant did not look amused and I’m thinking: What’s her problem; we’re here, aren’t we? You haven’t closed “that” damned door yet. So let us in.
Breathing very hard, hair completely askew, blouses half unbuttoned, dripping in sweat, we entered the inner sanctum, which by now, unlike most of the flights we all go on, is hushed— completely silent—not a peep.
I looked down that long aisle, no seats…every face was focused on us in total disgust.
Then our eyes fixed on a woman in the very first seat of first class. Guess who it was? Now she was doing the “tisk, tisk” thing, having lost any semblance of her earlier sympathy.
I can’t even describe the feeling I had as I passed each row of disgruntled expressions, hearing those, by now, familiar stage sighs until we got to the very last row next to the toilets and began the ordeal of trying to put 80-pounds of potatoes into a ten pound bag.
This was just prior to the time when they started making pas¬sengers give up their oversized carry-ons at the door of the plane. Now, of course, they take those bags to check them with the reg¬ular luggage. We may have had something to do with that rule.
When we got to the last row, the overhead bin was still open. However, there was only enough room for a makeup bag. Our rollie was nearly as large as one of the seats. It took both of us to lift it above our shoulders, clunking the head of the very upset man sitting in front of us and soliciting yet more deep sighs.
Once we got the corner of it wedged in, we pushed and pushed until we’d squashed every bag in the compartment to accommo¬date ours. Finally, it took two of the flight attendants to snap the door shut.
All the way home, I had visions of that plastic door popping open and that 80-pound bag hurtling out, injuring someone.
WHEN WE RETURNED FROM VEGAS, I dropped Frances off and headed home. It was late and the children were all in bed. I peeked in on them and then quickly unpacked and fell into bed.
With the exception of the airport fiasco, it had been a great trip.
The next morning, I was up at my usual early hour before everyone else fixing a bowl of fresh fruit and about to sit down, when I saw something very odd out of the corner of my eye. I heard scurrying and the sound of plastic dragging on the wooden floor boards.
What in the world was that? I first thought, speculating that a mouse was making its way from the porch to the kitchen. I got up and slowly walked around the cabinets clutching a piece of rolled up newspaper in one hand.
When I peeked around the corner, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There in the corner was poor Rascal, the hamster, with one of those cones around his neck and head, like the vets put on dogs that have had surgery so they won’t chew on their stitches. He looked so pitiful, yet so hilarious.
I’ve laughed a lot since that morning and often laughed hard, but if I live to be 90, I won’t laugh that much again. He was sitting up on his back haunches, his tiny head peeking out of this minia¬ture RCA-like horn, begging for food. I was in tears and about to pee my pants, when all three children woke up.
My friend that had stayed with the children informed me that the vet had explained that poor Rascal wasn’t out of the woods yet. For the next week, we marveled at the sight of this rodent wan¬dering through the house with a cone over his head. We had litterbox-trained him like many people do with rabbits. The kids doted on him like he was a sibling.
AFTER THE NOVEMBER TRUNK SHOW, we hired our first employee— a bookkeeper named Loraine knowing we were about to take the next step up the ladder. She was a Godsend: a real numbers person who is very kind, sweet, and soft-spoken.
She only worked two days a week, but she made a huge differ¬ence in how we ran our still-fledgling enterprise. She knew everything there was to know about accounting, finance, and busi¬ness, in general—in short, she was another complement to our individual talents. It was only a couple of weeks before we vali¬dated our original premise—always hire people smarter than yourself—or at least with talents you don’t possess.
On a late December afternoon in 2002, our first year in busi¬ness Loraine came in to talk with us.
Living hand to mouth and working like draft horses 15 hours a day had paid off. However, everything we’d made that year went right back into inventory, marketing, and travel and we’d only taken small paychecks for ourselves.
“Well, girls. I’ve got good news and bad. Which do you want first?” Loraine asked.
She stood there with a pair of granny glasses barely resting on the tip of her nose, quietly peeking over them, waiting for our answers.
“The good,” said Frances.
“The bad,” I said.
“The good news is that you made some money. Pretty damned good, I’d say.”
“Wow, profitable in the first year, great” I said.
“What’s the bad news?” Frances asked.
She shook her head. “Well, the bad news is, you owe the IRS. More money than you have in the bank.”
“How can we owe taxes? I don’t get it?” I said. “We must’ve poured thousands back into the business. How about all those marketing write-offs or the travel expenses?”
“I’ve already accounted for those. I’ve accounted for every¬thing that’s a legitimate deduction. You two need to open some retirement accounts to begin with and we need to set you up on a payment plan with the government.” Loraine lectured. From that point on, she started to put the money aside for the taxes.
Fortunately, the IRS took Visa, so we put part of it on Jude’s card and part on mine to placate them, and then commenced paying off the other 95% over time. It took us nearly nine months to pay the previous year’s taxes—just about in time to start on the next year’s bill.
Now, we’re each as patriotic as the next person, but Loraine’s news took a little wind out of our sails. At that moment, it felt like we’d worked for practically nothing. However, being the trooper she is, Loraine quickly reminded us she was on board and would counsel us from that moment on about how to keep every penny we were legally entitled to.
The next week, Frances and I opened a 401k and thanked God that we’d hired her,
One of the reasons Frances wanted to be prepared and not fumble around was the fact that we were carrying around a fair amount of money’s worth of jewelry in a very basic box, essentially a makeup kit. For obvious reasons, we didn’t want to let it go with our baggage, so we always clutched the box as if we expected a mugging at any moment.
That said, during a one-day trunk show in Vegas a few weeks after our initial tryout, we met a sales rep from Michele Watches, a popular brand that Manheim already carried, and she was a doll—very helpful and friendly.
AFTER THE SHOW, WE P ACKED up our line and set about getting to the airport. When we stepped outside, it was pouring rain.
There was a line of people 50 deep trying to get taxis, as many of the people at the show were doing the same as us—trying to get home. It seemed interminable as slowly one or two cabs would arrive and whisk off one or two people.
Nearly 40 minutes had passed and we were still huddled under the store awning not far from the curb, and Frances and I were beginning to worry that we’d miss our flight. Just then the Michele rep we’d met came back to us from the front of the line and very kindly offered to share her cab. We were elated.
As we entered the airport and were heading toward the ter¬minal, Frances and I automatically began searching our immense purses for the fare—we both had the same thought simultane-ously—pick up the fare for all three of us—of course.
Frances was sitting up front with the driver and I shared the back seat with the kind woman from Michele. Frances was uptight. I can always tell when she’s uneasy by the way she twists her hair with one hand, and fumbles in her purse with the other. She’d emp¬tied half the contents onto the seat, including her wallet, and I knew, just like me, she didn’t have a dime to her name.
We were mortified. What would we say?
“Jude, do you have any money?” she asked with a mild, pan¬icky look on her face.
I picked at articles in my purse, mostly for effect, because I already knew I didn’t. “Uh, uh, I don’t think so.”
“Don’t worry, girls. I’ll take care of it,” said our benefactor. With that, we both just slumped humiliated, into the seats. A hun¬dred sorrys wouldn’t have soothed our embarrassment.
Traveling to shows requires not only the need for a days worth of clothing, the essential makeup and toiletries, etc., etc., but of course, we had to carry our jewelry line with us, all in one carry¬on bag. And now, we really were late, but we still felt a good run at it would save the day.
So here are these two women, one rather petite, the other rather tall, lugging their enormous purses and a far-too-large rolling bag through the airport at breakneck speed, bumping past people on the escalator, zigging and zagging their way to the ticket counter to get their boarding passes.
When we finally arrived, the kind Michele rep was standing in front of us in line. We nodded and smiled to her as she picked her boarding pass up and headed to the terminal.
We, on the other hand could not find our drivers’ licenses.
As the kind rep approached the escalator, she looked back to see us with our purses and the rolling bag open in front of the ticket counter with most of the contents splayed out on the floor.
We were both on our hands and knees rummaging through the mess and, of course, there were 50 people in line growing increas¬ingly angry. As I looked back up at the escalator, I saw the kind rep rising in the air with a look that simply said, What a couple of ditzes, though she did smile one last time—sort of.
“I thought you were the organized one,” I said to Frances.
“Don’t start.”
Finally, Frances found gold. Somewhere in the morass of her belongings, she discovered both our licenses and money—voila!
Before I could even look at her, she said, “Don’t say a word.”
We’d only survived half our adventure at that point. We still had to make the plane carrying the two heavy purses and the giant rolling case.
Off we went, running again, jumping past people on the esca¬lator, once again zigzagging through the throngs and in a short breathed panic we arrived at the security gate, which of course also had a long line waiting.
Frances was tapping her foot and I was chewing on a nail as we oh-so-slowly approached the X-ray machine. Once through the checkpoint, we raced to the first departure monitor frantically looking for the Orange County America West flight, hoping against all hope that it was still on the tarmac.
“Flight 321 has been delayed,” it read.
“Crap! I couldn’t believe it. After all that, the damned thing was delayed. Oh well, there is nothing left to do but to have a drink,” Frances said, as she turned and started toward the nearest bar without even saying another word to me.
It appeared we had enough time to imbibe one, so we sat in the bar drinking margaritas, which at that point tasted like a bit of heaven, and I pulled out the tickets.
“Which gate is it?” Frances asked.
“Hmm, looks like 36C,” I answered.
After a healthy margarita and a verbal reliving of the entire day, I walked out to the monitor to find the flight was back on— in fact, it was leaving in 15 minutes. Geeze, I thought, we’re still going to miss our flight! Funny how a harmless margarita can dis¬tort time.
Once again, we were off and running. She was carrying our two purses, which are more like large backpacks, and I was coming up the rear with an 80-pound rolling bag—the one that was far too big for the overhead and should hold only about 25 pounds of gear.
It was an aerobic moment to be sure. Actually, it was several aerobic moments until we arrived at the gate where we stood with our mouths open—nobody was there. There were no ticket takers, no passengers waiting reading papers—nobody.
“What the hell?” Frances said. “Jude, are you sure it’s 36C?”
“I’m pretty sure,” I answered, as I thrust my hand into my
purse to retrieve the tickets. “You’re ‘pretty’ sure?” she said. “Oh my gaw-w-w-wd,” I said. “It’s not 36C. It’s 36B. “Jude!” We began running off again in the opposite direction, racing to
the opposite side of the terminal. Half way there, I really thought I was running out of gas, but we managed to make it, just in time to see another completely empty gate—no ticket takers, no travelers.
“Damn! What in the hell is going on? Are we nuts?” Frances said. That’s when I pulled out the tickets again and gave them a more careful look.
Damn! It’s not gate 36B or C. It’s seats 36B and C. Frances is going to kill me.
“Uh, sweetie,” I said gently, “you’re not going to believe this.”
“Oh yes I will.”
“The 36B and C thing?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not the gate, it’s our…”
“Yes, go on, what is it?”
“Uh, uh, it’s our seats.”
“Wow. Are you kidding me? No, wait, don’t answer that,” she
said as she ran off to the monitors once again. “Come on,” she said as she grabbed one of the bags. “We can still make it.” And off I ran behind her.
By the time we finally arrived at the right gate, we’d done close to 2 miles of wind sprints through half the Las Vegas airport. As we were getting closer to the gate, we could hear that our flight number was making the last call.
In full-blown panic, we finally got to the ticket counter where
Las Vegas Trade Show
the agents were packing up and one of them is closing that door that leads down the ramp, and we all know what that means. If the door closes, we’re doomed. Even if for some reason that plane sits there for another half hour—after “the” door closes, we’re not going anywhere.
But we begged the agent as if this was a life or death situation, and she actually relented.
“But hurry,” she said, “Even if you get to the plane, if they close ‘the’ door, you won’t get in.”
We ran down the long ramp, still lugging the enormous bag and purses, and got to the plane just as the attendant was begin¬ning to close the door.
“Wait!” Frances yelled. “Wait!”
The attendant did not look amused and I’m thinking: What’s her problem; we’re here, aren’t we? You haven’t closed “that” damned door yet. So let us in.
Breathing very hard, hair completely askew, blouses half unbuttoned, dripping in sweat, we entered the inner sanctum, which by now, unlike most of the flights we all go on, is hushed— completely silent—not a peep.
I looked down that long aisle, no seats…every face was focused on us in total disgust.
Then our eyes fixed on a woman in the very first seat of first class. Guess who it was? Now she was doing the “tisk, tisk” thing, having lost any semblance of her earlier sympathy.
I can’t even describe the feeling I had as I passed each row of disgruntled expressions, hearing those, by now, familiar stage sighs until we got to the very last row next to the toilets and began the ordeal of trying to put 80-pounds of potatoes into a ten pound bag.
This was just prior to the time when they started making pas¬sengers give up their oversized carry-ons at the door of the plane. Now, of course, they take those bags to check them with the reg¬ular luggage. We may have had something to do with that rule.
When we got to the last row, the overhead bin was still open. However, there was only enough room for a makeup bag. Our rollie was nearly as large as one of the seats. It took both of us to lift it above our shoulders, clunking the head of the very upset man sitting in front of us and soliciting yet more deep sighs.
Once we got the corner of it wedged in, we pushed and pushed until we’d squashed every bag in the compartment to accommo¬date ours. Finally, it took two of the flight attendants to snap the door shut.
All the way home, I had visions of that plastic door popping open and that 80-pound bag hurtling out, injuring someone.
WHEN WE RETURNED FROM VEGAS, I dropped Frances off and headed home. It was late and the children were all in bed. I peeked in on them and then quickly unpacked and fell into bed.
With the exception of the airport fiasco, it had been a great trip.
The next morning, I was up at my usual early hour before everyone else fixing a bowl of fresh fruit and about to sit down, when I saw something very odd out of the corner of my eye. I heard scurrying and the sound of plastic dragging on the wooden floor boards.
What in the world was that? I first thought, speculating that a mouse was making its way from the porch to the kitchen. I got up and slowly walked around the cabinets clutching a piece of rolled up newspaper in one hand.
When I peeked around the corner, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There in the corner was poor Rascal, the hamster, with one of those cones around his neck and head, like the vets put on dogs that have had surgery so they won’t chew on their stitches. He looked so pitiful, yet so hilarious.
I’ve laughed a lot since that morning and often laughed hard, but if I live to be 90, I won’t laugh that much again. He was sitting up on his back haunches, his tiny head peeking out of this minia¬ture RCA-like horn, begging for food. I was in tears and about to pee my pants, when all three children woke up.
My friend that had stayed with the children informed me that the vet had explained that poor Rascal wasn’t out of the woods yet. For the next week, we marveled at the sight of this rodent wan¬dering through the house with a cone over his head. We had litterbox-trained him like many people do with rabbits. The kids doted on him like he was a sibling.
AFTER THE NOVEMBER TRUNK SHOW, we hired our first employee— a bookkeeper named Loraine knowing we were about to take the next step up the ladder. She was a Godsend: a real numbers person who is very kind, sweet, and soft-spoken.
She only worked two days a week, but she made a huge differ¬ence in how we ran our still-fledgling enterprise. She knew everything there was to know about accounting, finance, and busi¬ness, in general—in short, she was another complement to our individual talents. It was only a couple of weeks before we vali¬dated our original premise—always hire people smarter than yourself—or at least with talents you don’t possess.
On a late December afternoon in 2002, our first year in busi¬ness Loraine came in to talk with us.
Living hand to mouth and working like draft horses 15 hours a day had paid off. However, everything we’d made that year went right back into inventory, marketing, and travel and we’d only taken small paychecks for ourselves.
“Well, girls. I’ve got good news and bad. Which do you want first?” Loraine asked.
She stood there with a pair of granny glasses barely resting on the tip of her nose, quietly peeking over them, waiting for our answers.
“The good,” said Frances.
“The bad,” I said.
“The good news is that you made some money. Pretty damned good, I’d say.”
“Wow, profitable in the first year, great” I said.
“What’s the bad news?” Frances asked.
She shook her head. “Well, the bad news is, you owe the IRS. More money than you have in the bank.”
“How can we owe taxes? I don’t get it?” I said. “We must’ve poured thousands back into the business. How about all those marketing write-offs or the travel expenses?”
“I’ve already accounted for those. I’ve accounted for every¬thing that’s a legitimate deduction. You two need to open some retirement accounts to begin with and we need to set you up on a payment plan with the government.” Loraine lectured. From that point on, she started to put the money aside for the taxes.
Fortunately, the IRS took Visa, so we put part of it on Jude’s card and part on mine to placate them, and then commenced paying off the other 95% over time. It took us nearly nine months to pay the previous year’s taxes—just about in time to start on the next year’s bill.
Now, we’re each as patriotic as the next person, but Loraine’s news took a little wind out of our sails. At that moment, it felt like we’d worked for practically nothing. However, being the trooper she is, Loraine quickly reminded us she was on board and would counsel us from that moment on about how to keep every penny we were legally entitled to.
The next week, Frances and I opened a 401k and thanked God that we’d hired her,
Chapter 7-Tryouts for the Big Leagues
The first week in October, we finally met with Doris in Texas, at the Manheim’s store in Dallas, but not before a migraine almost put Jude out of commission. This time, we actually would have been on time to our meeting with Doris, had the airport bath¬room emergency not occurred.
It might have been Jude’s enthusiasm or even a bit of stress over our first meeting with someone so powerful, but as the plane was about to land, she started complaining of a headache and not just any headache.
We made it to the restroom in the terminal and I spent the next hour applying a cold, wet towel to the back of her neck and to her forehead. Then she started throwing up. I couldn’t remember ever being that helpless, and she had nothing to take for it. We just had to wait it out.
After an hour, it subsided enough for us to find a taxi and make our way to Manheim’s. Doris’ first reaction was a large smile and then congratulatory handshakes.
“I love them,” she said. “I think they’ll be perfect for us.”
I was amazed at how small her office was considering her posi¬tion. It seemed to us that she held the keys to our financial existence and here she was holding court in a tiny 10 foot by 10 foot room, cluttered with boxes of jewelry, file folders, magazines, and old McDonald’s food wrappers. She appeared to be very dis¬organized.
However, visions of sugarplums danced in our heads. We were in, and I was already counting the booty when Doris said, “Of course, we’ll have to try you out first at a couple of trunk shows.”
Huh? I thought tryouts were for major league baseball. And what in the world is a trunk show?
“Oh, I can see you girls are a little mystified,” Doris offered. “A trunk show is where you bring your line into a store and we do a bit of promoting to let people know you’re there and that you have wonderful jewelry, and then we see how it sells and how you do with the people,” she said as she fidgeted with several files on her desk, seemingly in search of something lost.
Well, I supposed that made sense. After all, this was the major leagues for us.
“Once we see how you do in those two shows, we’ll make our decision whether to buy or not. That’s how it works, girls.”
Without escorting us out, or saying goodbye, she turned and began to rummage through more files on her credenza. Every time we saw her after that, she always seemed to be looking for a termi¬nally lost article of some sort.
We were left with the feeling that though promising, we were just two more hungry designers who would give an arm to be accepted into the Manheim family. She was polite but distracted, we thought. Nevertheless, we walked away on clouds.
Our first show was in Dallas because that was the flagship store—where it all started. It was nerve-racking but at the same time thrilling—our first little taste of celebrity. As we came into the jew¬elry department, we noticed right away that the store had produced posters of us and our company logo and hung them on walls around the area—a very nice touch that gave us an immediate boost.
It was the typical Manheim’s store: marble floors polished to a high luster, lots of open space, bright, but reserved, clean as a sur¬gical room filled with the crème de la crème of everything and plenty of things not found “anywhere” else, one of their trademarks.
It was close to opening time as we set up our line, smiled, and sort of milled around, not knowing exactly what to do. I continu¬ally picked up our pieces and pretended to polish them a bit with a cloth, trying to look busy, while Jude checked and rechecked her makeup, and paced. We both felt a bit like street vendors hawking their wares on a deserted street corner. After several hours passed with next to no customers, we began to worry. It was so quiet, we could have had bowling practice down the aisles.
As the day progressed, we sold a few pieces, but that seemed dismal, especially since Doris had told us a little fib. She said that the corporate office expected us to sell $20,000 worth that day— it was pretty much standard, she told us.
By noon, that seemed insurmountable and by two in the after¬noon, it felt downright ridiculous. It was one thing to fail in a store filled with customers, quite another to miss the mark because everyone in Dallas decided to spend the hot afternoon indoors watching the Cowboys on TV.
We panicked. By three in the afternoon, we figured we might have sold a few thousand dollars worth at best. That’s when the idea hit. I’d have our friends help us along a bit. I told Jude to get on her cell phone and start calling everyone we knew in Dallas to come in and buy something, anything—and they did. It was amazing and that’s when the most extraordinary thing happened. When I told one of my best friends about our plight, she said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea. Describe to me your most expen¬sive piece.” It was a $6,000 bracelet.
About 45 minutes later, one of the salesclerks came over to us and said the most remarkable thing had just occurred. A man had called from Newport Beach directly to the jewelry department. The salesgirl had taken his call. He told her that his wife was on a busi¬ness trip in Dallas and had seen a JudeFrances piece she absolutely had to have. The man then went on to describe that piece in per¬fect detail, adding that his wife had left her credit card in her luggage, was on her way to the airport, and asked him if he wouldn’t be a doll by calling the store to purchase it for her, using his card.
We sold the piece and the store shipped it directly to him.
The show turned out to be a monumental success, not just because of our dear friends, whom we give enormous amounts of gratitude, but to the fact that at around four that afternoon, foot traffic suddenly and inexplicably picked up.
Not only did our friends boost our sales, their presence attracted a lot of attention and energy, but by the end of the day, we’d also sold $17,000 worth of jewelry. We should have been ecstatic. Instead, we felt dejected; we hadn’t reached even the average mark of $20,000. That’s when Doris came over and revealed to us that she’d fibbed. They actually only expected us to sell $10,000. We were beside ourselves!
Our next show was in late November, held in Beverly Hills, closer to home. Once again, the store looked like a ghost town. I started to think that maybe we should bring a Parcheesi game on our next visit, to pass the time. However, on this occasion, there was a more plausible answer. It was Monday, the day following the big After Thanksgiving Day sales weekend. Everyone had already blown their wads. We didn’t have a choice. It was once again time to hit the cell phones and, again, our friends came through like troopers. The Manheim’s family immediately took us in when we ended the day with a with a $15,000 showing.
THE ONL Y DRA WBACK W A S that we had to buy the $6,000 bracelet back from our friend’s husband from the Dallas show. As Jude was trying to figure out how to put it on her Visa, we got a call from the buyer, Bill, who said, “Not to worry. Take your time. Pay me when you can.”
God, aren’t friends the best thing in the world?
It took us four months to pay him back. However, he gave the piece back to us right away and we managed to sell it to another friend just before the final payment was due to Bill.
It might have been Jude’s enthusiasm or even a bit of stress over our first meeting with someone so powerful, but as the plane was about to land, she started complaining of a headache and not just any headache.
We made it to the restroom in the terminal and I spent the next hour applying a cold, wet towel to the back of her neck and to her forehead. Then she started throwing up. I couldn’t remember ever being that helpless, and she had nothing to take for it. We just had to wait it out.
After an hour, it subsided enough for us to find a taxi and make our way to Manheim’s. Doris’ first reaction was a large smile and then congratulatory handshakes.
“I love them,” she said. “I think they’ll be perfect for us.”
I was amazed at how small her office was considering her posi¬tion. It seemed to us that she held the keys to our financial existence and here she was holding court in a tiny 10 foot by 10 foot room, cluttered with boxes of jewelry, file folders, magazines, and old McDonald’s food wrappers. She appeared to be very dis¬organized.
However, visions of sugarplums danced in our heads. We were in, and I was already counting the booty when Doris said, “Of course, we’ll have to try you out first at a couple of trunk shows.”
Huh? I thought tryouts were for major league baseball. And what in the world is a trunk show?
“Oh, I can see you girls are a little mystified,” Doris offered. “A trunk show is where you bring your line into a store and we do a bit of promoting to let people know you’re there and that you have wonderful jewelry, and then we see how it sells and how you do with the people,” she said as she fidgeted with several files on her desk, seemingly in search of something lost.
Well, I supposed that made sense. After all, this was the major leagues for us.
“Once we see how you do in those two shows, we’ll make our decision whether to buy or not. That’s how it works, girls.”
Without escorting us out, or saying goodbye, she turned and began to rummage through more files on her credenza. Every time we saw her after that, she always seemed to be looking for a termi¬nally lost article of some sort.
We were left with the feeling that though promising, we were just two more hungry designers who would give an arm to be accepted into the Manheim family. She was polite but distracted, we thought. Nevertheless, we walked away on clouds.
Our first show was in Dallas because that was the flagship store—where it all started. It was nerve-racking but at the same time thrilling—our first little taste of celebrity. As we came into the jew¬elry department, we noticed right away that the store had produced posters of us and our company logo and hung them on walls around the area—a very nice touch that gave us an immediate boost.
It was the typical Manheim’s store: marble floors polished to a high luster, lots of open space, bright, but reserved, clean as a sur¬gical room filled with the crème de la crème of everything and plenty of things not found “anywhere” else, one of their trademarks.
It was close to opening time as we set up our line, smiled, and sort of milled around, not knowing exactly what to do. I continu¬ally picked up our pieces and pretended to polish them a bit with a cloth, trying to look busy, while Jude checked and rechecked her makeup, and paced. We both felt a bit like street vendors hawking their wares on a deserted street corner. After several hours passed with next to no customers, we began to worry. It was so quiet, we could have had bowling practice down the aisles.
As the day progressed, we sold a few pieces, but that seemed dismal, especially since Doris had told us a little fib. She said that the corporate office expected us to sell $20,000 worth that day— it was pretty much standard, she told us.
By noon, that seemed insurmountable and by two in the after¬noon, it felt downright ridiculous. It was one thing to fail in a store filled with customers, quite another to miss the mark because everyone in Dallas decided to spend the hot afternoon indoors watching the Cowboys on TV.
We panicked. By three in the afternoon, we figured we might have sold a few thousand dollars worth at best. That’s when the idea hit. I’d have our friends help us along a bit. I told Jude to get on her cell phone and start calling everyone we knew in Dallas to come in and buy something, anything—and they did. It was amazing and that’s when the most extraordinary thing happened. When I told one of my best friends about our plight, she said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea. Describe to me your most expen¬sive piece.” It was a $6,000 bracelet.
About 45 minutes later, one of the salesclerks came over to us and said the most remarkable thing had just occurred. A man had called from Newport Beach directly to the jewelry department. The salesgirl had taken his call. He told her that his wife was on a busi¬ness trip in Dallas and had seen a JudeFrances piece she absolutely had to have. The man then went on to describe that piece in per¬fect detail, adding that his wife had left her credit card in her luggage, was on her way to the airport, and asked him if he wouldn’t be a doll by calling the store to purchase it for her, using his card.
We sold the piece and the store shipped it directly to him.
The show turned out to be a monumental success, not just because of our dear friends, whom we give enormous amounts of gratitude, but to the fact that at around four that afternoon, foot traffic suddenly and inexplicably picked up.
Not only did our friends boost our sales, their presence attracted a lot of attention and energy, but by the end of the day, we’d also sold $17,000 worth of jewelry. We should have been ecstatic. Instead, we felt dejected; we hadn’t reached even the average mark of $20,000. That’s when Doris came over and revealed to us that she’d fibbed. They actually only expected us to sell $10,000. We were beside ourselves!
Our next show was in late November, held in Beverly Hills, closer to home. Once again, the store looked like a ghost town. I started to think that maybe we should bring a Parcheesi game on our next visit, to pass the time. However, on this occasion, there was a more plausible answer. It was Monday, the day following the big After Thanksgiving Day sales weekend. Everyone had already blown their wads. We didn’t have a choice. It was once again time to hit the cell phones and, again, our friends came through like troopers. The Manheim’s family immediately took us in when we ended the day with a with a $15,000 showing.
THE ONL Y DRA WBACK W A S that we had to buy the $6,000 bracelet back from our friend’s husband from the Dallas show. As Jude was trying to figure out how to put it on her Visa, we got a call from the buyer, Bill, who said, “Not to worry. Take your time. Pay me when you can.”
God, aren’t friends the best thing in the world?
It took us four months to pay him back. However, he gave the piece back to us right away and we managed to sell it to another friend just before the final payment was due to Bill.
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