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Who knew saving a life could so much fun? Shop and save life at the same time. Make your appointment online or come in, shop and sign up.
It's easy ::
-- go to http://www.redcrossblood.org
-- enter sponsor code (all one word): leonandlulu
-- pick your appointment time and you are set to save a life
Hope to see you there!
Don't forget to submit your application for the Fall Artist Market to be held Sunday, August 29 and Tuesday, August 31.
See you the Artists' Market page for details.
Leon & Lulu is proud to be part of the Steering Committee for this fantastic design event in Detroit benefiting the Michigan Aids Coalition.It will be held at the Benson and Edith Ford Conference Center at the College for Creative Studies.
See http://michiganaidscoalition.org/events-2/diffa-dining-by-design/ for more information
Leon & Lulu is delighted to celebrate local artists’ work with our Fall Artists’ Market. There is no admission fee to attend or exhibit. While some artists from the previous Market will return, more than half the exhibitors will be new to the Market to ensure that the greatest possible number of artists can participate for the first time. The deadline to submit your work is July 26.
Join us for a Halloween Party to benefit Haven of Oakland County. More details to follow!
Sign up today online www.redcrossblood.org sponsor code: leonandlulu or in the store! Hope to see you there!
Who knew saving a life could so much fun!? Shop and save life at the same time! Make your appointment online or come in, shop and sign up.
It's easy ::
-- go to http://www.redcrossblood.org
-- enter sponsor code (all one word) leonandlulu
-- pick your appointment time and you are set to save a life
What if I came to you recently for advice on opening a business? What if I said I was going to open a 15,000-square-foot, brick-and-mortar, retail store selling gift items and furniture? What if I told you I was going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating this store? What if I told you it was in suburban Detroit? Put down the phone, there is no need to have me committed. The suggestions I’m making are exactly the choices made by Mary Liz Curtin and Stephen Scannell just a few years ago, and thanks to their understanding of The Awesome Experience, their store, Leon & Lulu, was in the black in less than four months, and today, it is a highly profitable multimillion-dollar destination store in Clawson, Mich.
It’s no secret that most new retail ventures fail, so dissecting the strategy behind Leon & Lulu’s success is a worthwhile endeavor that neatly exposes The Awesome Experience components.
NeedMary Liz and Stephen love retail. They both had decades of prior retail experience and Mary Liz speaks, writes and consults for the retail industry. As Detroit locals, they were well aware of the economic challenges in their area. With unemployment greater than 15 percent and the decimation of the automobile industry, Detroit business had suffered for more than a decade. But through their research, they realized that more than 80 percent of suburbanites still had jobs and needed to buy things.
Furniture wears out, gets dated and eventually needs to be replaced. Gift items may seem like an unnecessary luxury, but in reality, they are a necessary staple in American life, so Mary Liz was intent on making sure she had something worth buying.
A big part of Leon & Lulu’s success is due to the amount of research and forethought that Mary Liz and Stephen put into their buying and selling process. Months before they began, the couple created a detailed business plan. They were crystal clear on their expenses and how much they would need to sell each day and at what margins just to keep the doors open.
Their research and forethought helped them find the best vendors for products that met their pricing and margin criteria. They keep a steady overstock of products reflecting a meticulous selection of core performers with room for new and exciting experiments.
EntertainmentFrom day one, Mary Liz designed Leon & Lulu to delight. Stephen spent months searching for the perfect facility. They found it in the form of a 1941 suburban roller rink that was still in use. It had charm, was unique and could accommodate large events, which would become the key to customer growth. They were intentional in rehabbing the space to be party central. They made it caterer-friendly, bought land next to the store for parking and planned the interior to accommodate crowds. They even left the roller floor intact and kept 300 pairs of skates for decoration.
Mary Liz has made it easy for individuals and community groups alike to host everything from birthday parties and showers to fund-raisers like their annual Hysterical, Historical Museum party, and they even host artist’s markets. Apparently one still-living patron has reserved the store for her wake, in hopefully the distant future.
Mary Liz and Stephen are able to manage all of this off-the-wall chaos by being obsessively organized behind the scenes. Mary Liz also supports all of the charitable events by donating 10 percent of the proceeds, and she increases her customer database through co-promotion.
The UnexpectedWhat takes Leon & Lulu from great to awesome is the creativity. In a day when so much of the retail experience is contrived, Mary Liz finds ways to personalize the interaction of her store with the customers.
Hospitality for the whole family starts the second you enter and smell the cookies baking. You can often hear laughter over the fun, hip music. The staff will gift wrap everything at no charge while they joke around and engage you in warm, friendly discussion.
Once you are a friend of the store, you will find yourself the unexpected recipient of spontaneous gifts for a birthday or when your spirits need a lift. Mary Liz even has a budget for giving gifts to those who are grieving or suffering. Her comprehensive approach to gift giving has led to a deeply loyal following and steady sales growth. The gift component of the store initially designed to be a supplement to furniture sales, now represents more than 60 percent of the store’s revenue.
Leon & Lulu effectively showcases the benefits of stringent forethought, consistent focus and passion for your business. Here is some self-analysis to help make you awesome, Mary Liz style:
Often businesses focus on customers or operations or products or promotion or environment but rarely do they put together all of the above. Successful business today rarely happens by accident, so get planning, get connected and get creative.
KEVIN DAUM is the principal of TAE International and the author of several books, including “ROAR! Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle.” He is a regular speaker and consultant on marketing and book development. Reach him at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Check out Kevin’s Quest for the Jewish Super Bowl Ring at http://www.awesomeroar.com/.
After converting a roller rink into a furniture and gift shop in 2006, Mary Liz Curtin sought to preserve the original essence of the 15,000-square-foot facility by hiring workers to serve fresh coffee to shoppers—while wearing skates. To handle the task, she hired several of her existing employees' teenage kids.
"They thought it was a fun place to work," says Ms. Curtin, who co-owns the Clawson, Mich., retail concern, Leon & Lulu LLC, with her husband, Stephen Scannell.
But the arrangement quickly turned out to be far from fun for the couple. When Ms. Curtin reprimanded a staff member for sporting low-cut jeans and exposed bra straps on the job, she says the employee's mother, a cashier at Leon & Lulu, became defensive.
"The lines got really blurred between who's the boss, who's the mother and who works for whom," says Ms. Curtin, adding that afterward she and her husband decided they would no longer hire their staff's kin.
Among small firms, particularly family-owned businesses, employing workers who are related to one another is fairly common practice. Some owners say bringing workers' nearest and dearest on board helps boost team spirit and loyalty. But other entrepreneurs say they've learned that employing people who are related can create tension and expose their firms to potential fraud.
"For us, it has worked and we've done it going back to the beginning, 1974," says Sandy Jaffe, founder of Booksource Inc., a small family-owned wholesale business in St. Louis with 200 employees. He believes a worker's kin is "going to try and succeed if for no other reason to make their relative look good. They don't want to disappoint someone in their family."
Several employees at Booksource Inc., a wholesale business in St. Louis, are related to one another. From left to right, Brandon Darrough, a processing specialist, and his sister Erika Darrough, a customer-service representative; Sandy Jaffe, founder; Tracey Brewer, a warehouse manager, and her daughters, Samantha and Kimberly Brewer, sorting specialists.
To be sure, Mr. Jaffe says spats sometimes occur between related employees. He even suspects that some staffers have quit over the years because they came to dislike working alongside their family members. But for the most part, he says employees with blood ties get along just fine, including a mom who has two adult daughters as direct reports.
And, he says family members can help solve issues with co-workers' kin. One of Mr. Jaffe's employees, who he says was close to being fired, once managed to retain his warehouse job at Booksource thanks in part to his co-worker spouse. Managers approached the wife about her husband's increasingly bad attitude after he failed to heed repeated warnings, and soon after, his behavior improved. "He's turned out to be a fine employee," Mr. Jaffe says, who acknowledges that the tactic was unconventional.
Still, hiring a staffer's relative could also generate negative results, warns Mark T. Green, principal of Family Business Consulting Group, an advisory firm to family businesses with offices in Atlanta and Chicago. Employees whose colleagues include relatives may be inclined to cover for one another when problems arise, he says. Or worse, they might take advantage of the situation by conspiring together to do harm. "You could have a couple of people from the same family, one in accounting, another in the field, and they're embezzling," he says.
Business owners may be able to avoid messes associated with employing workers' kin by engaging in a more thorough vetting process before making hiring decisions, says Ted Clark, executive director of Northeastern University's Center for Family Business. But some skip this step because they assume that a relative of a high-quality employee will be just as good, he says.
"You want to hire for the right reasons," says Mr. Clark. "There's tremendous room for error here."
Denis Stepansky, founder of ItsHot.com Inc., an online retailer, says he made this mistake just a few months ago when he hired a top-notch employee's relative. That relative stopped showing up for work and a video camera appears to show him stealing at least $20,000 worth of jewelry from the small New York firm, he alleges.
"We trusted him blindly," says Mr. Stepansky.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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