The Christmas Queen
posted: 12/22/2010 by Connie Thompson
Dec 22 2010
The Detroit area doesn’t get much good economic press, but specialty retailer Mary Liz Curtin has shown significant year-over-year sales increases. That’s a lot of flying monkeys tucked into Christmas stockings.
I first started talking with Mary Liz Curtin about Christmas in the spring, when the specialty retailer stopped by the Portfolio.com offices to introduce herself. She came loaded with small items perfect for stocking stuffers (the flying and screaming monkey she had in hand will be a big hit on Saturday morning, I’m sure).
With Christmas just a few days away, I wanted to check in with Curtin to find out how the year had gone and how the holiday season was shaping up. Curtin, along with her husband, are owners of Leon & Lulu, a combination gift, clothing, and furniture store in Clawson, Michigan, just north of Detroit.
Curtin may be a small-business woman, but her five-year-old store is anything but small. Set inside an old roller-skating rink, it fills 15,000 square feet. The size makes it perfect for Curtin to host a series of charity and community events, a tactic that has helped Curtin give back to causes and groups she believes in while building word-of-mouth advertising for Leon & Lulu.
Taking a short break this week to update me on her 32-employee business, Curtin—who moonlights as a motivational speaker and author about entrepreneurship—offered a jolly assessment:
How would you describe this Christmas shopping season compared with the last couple of years?
It seems to be on the upswing. I read this morning it’s the first normal Christmas in three years. Our traffic is up, and shoppers are telling me other stores are too. The anecdotal evidence in the Detroit area is it’s a rocking Christmas. And it’s about time. People don’t seem to be as nervous. They’re excited about the holidays. They always buy at Christmas, but they’re talking about what they want to do next year as well, so I’m hoping to see an uptick in the larger-ticket items like sofas because people aren’t as scared that this might be their last Christmas with a job.
With more holiday business being done online, do you worry about how that will affect your business?
We finally launched our online presence the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It was a bit late for the season, but it’s there. My biggest challengeis providing as exciting an experience online as we do in the store.
Although we’re live, we’re still in a testing mode. I’ve been pretty interested in people who are ordering online and then doing pickups in the store. I think our online shopper is someone who knows what she wants, but is afraid we’re going to run out. It’s someone who is after something specific, not really a browser shopper.
You built your company not just to earn a living, but also to make an impact on your community. What’s the most creative way you’ve tapped into that this year?
Let’s see. We had a blood drive, had a pet adoption, had a pinewood derby with a 50-foot racetrack. We’ve had a fashion show, we’ve had psychics doing readings. When we started our cause-related marketing, we didn’t know we’d have that big an impact. But this year we’ve had 65 special events, and 53 were for charity. It’s been fabulous to be able to do. We couldn’t afford to write those checks if we didn’t do it through our store.
We see tremendous repeat customers, and we have phenomenal word of mouth because of these events. We also give an item to every single silent auction or raffle. I think we gave away $24,000 worth of stuff last year. But we plan for it, and I buy for it so I don’t have to say no to anyone. And it’s paid off well. We’ve been profitable since our fifth month of business, and we continue to be profitable.
Can you go into that more and talk about your revenues?
I don’t like to discuss numbers, but what I can say is that last year, Christmas business was up 40 percent compared with 2008, and overall sales were up 20 percent for the year. This year, if we closed the door tonight, we’d be up 22 percent overall from 2009. In November, our sales were up 52 percent, and so far in December, we’re up 32 percent compared with last year.
Christmas is just a few days away. Are there any particularly hot last-minute gift ideas out there?
We’re seeing a wonderful combination of shoppers, people who are just desperate and don’t know what to do—a lot who happen to be men—and we’re selling a lot of safe items, like Frasier candles. People are buying more gifts, buying two or three things, and they’re looking for happy stuff.
And we’ve tried to find creative ways of promoting certain products. We had $9 light-up tops, and we sold 72 of them in one day because I had a kid spinning them. It was definitely a lesson on how product demonstration can move inventory.
The surprise best-seller this season is Gurgle Pots, fish-shaped pitchers that make a gurgling sound when you use them. They’re a perfect combination of a well-designed, functional item that has a fun and quirky surprise in the sound
What trends do you see in the specialty retail space for 2011?
When people need to shop, they need to have great products. A lot of stores that went out of business just didn’t have inventory when customers came back. My goal is to find things that are interesting that no one else has, and also to stay in stock for those things that customers keep coming back for. That’s part of my commitment for being overstocked at all times.