Glitterville...where every day is a holiday!
My entire life has been dedicated to the celebration of one thing or the other. As a child I would spend all of my days making decorations for the next upcoming holiday...it was then that I realized that something was always coming. Jack-o-lanterns were put away for pine cone turkeys, which made only a brief appearance before it was time to put up our Christmas tree..which was left up until February and taken down just in time to make Valentines...the paper and glitter scraps from those were barely cleared in time to start writing limericks and making Leprechauns...see what I mean? Something is Always Coming!
Oddly enough I always dreaded Christmas day...sure Santa would come and leave lots of gifts and the amount of sweets consumed was endless...but it was also a sign that it was OVER. The holiday let down was almost more than I could handle until someone said "it's only 364 days till Christmas," it was at that moment I realized...that it wasn’t over...it had started OVER and I was once again preparing for the holidays.
I would have to say that I have never been a person who cared much for reality. I would much prefer the proscenium of the stage, over a doorway leading to normal everyday life...this has always served me in one way or the other. I have been very lucky to have a career where imagination was welcomed instead of discouraged.
During my career as a costume designer for television and film I began to split my time between New York City and my hometown in Tennessee. It was here that I purchased an old Edwardian home built in 1904. This gave me much more space than I had at my home in the city and it was great not having to move my craft projects to sleep or eat. While working on a pilot for a television show I decided that i wanted it to be holiday oriented with a focus on making ornaments and decor...the theory of show producers was that there wasn't enough content for a daily show and they could not grasp my new motto of "Make every day a holiday." Through the process of creating projects for the show I decided what I should be spending my time on was creating a company that would bring all of these projects to life. I enlisted Bryan Wilkerson, who was the head of an art department at a local college to help me create what would eventually become the wondrously wacky world of Glitterville. That was in 2003, since then there have been many changes. After a few years of 14 hour days, seven days a week Bryan decided that he wanted to return to his real love of teaching art...and having summers off. Since then he and Shelly have had a beautiful bouncing baby boy named Brody and the college where he originally taught was lucky enough to get him back again. We are still good friends and he will always remain one of the few people who understands the amount of work it takes to pull off a successful holiday line.
In 2007 I decided to take the Glitterville brand, from its then licensing partner Department 56 and look for a new home. Many people have ask why and reasons were widely speculated within the industry. It simply came down to the management of Department 56 making changes which I did not feel were right for our brand...I requested my contract be dissolved and then I returned to the studio to start creating one of a kind pieces once again. Products are designed years in advance so Glitterville remained on the Department 56 shelves until late last year...which confused a lot of people who new we were no longer part of that organization...anyway thats the story and hopefully that helps everyone understand the progression of the Glitter machine.
Remember earlier in this story, I told you that in life something is always coming and Glitterville's next chapter is proof of that. After I left D56 I returned to the studio to continue marketing the Glitterville brand on my own, when I was contacted by my friend David Dewey. A 30 year veteran of the giftware industry who had retired from D56 about the same time we arrived there. I might mention also that he was the one who first spotted Glitterville as a brand and arranged our meetings which would lead to our licensing and ultimately the instant notoriety that some artisans never receive. We talked on the phone and to my surprise he had been working on the floor plans to create a new business. He had put much thought into the logistics of importing and developing quality items at a price more affordable than the market had recently seen, but was lacking someone who shared the love of knick knacks as much as he did. Well long story shorter...I do realize it's too late for that...we determined that together we were like the perfect cupcake...he had the structure of a firm batter, and I the fluff of really sweet frosting, that combined with the absence of good sense telling us not to do it, set us on our way to create a new company that did things differently.
We called the new company One Hundred 80 Degrees...a new direction in giftware! In three months we designed products, developed products, photographed products, assembled our first catalog and opened showrooms around the country (a task that a traditional company would have taken years to pull off) If you think it was easy and no mistakes were made, guess again. One example was an oversized nutcracker type display piece called Colonel Cupcake whom we shipped in two boxes...it was the luck of the draw which part you would receive??? The phone started ringing from stores who only had one half...but most people were very understanding and before you knew it, we had set up a system similar to a game of "Go Fish," yep, we would pick up the phone, find out which part they had and immediately find someone else who had the other. Eventually it was a pretty cool game...but I hope to never play it again!
Its been quite the ride! There has been lots of laughing, crying and certain exhaustion but there has never been regret for what we have come through. Our first year was a huge success, despite the fact we opened in the largest recession since the great depression. We are now on year two and One Hundred 80 Degrees is officially on the game board with all the other players in the holiday industry. I like to think of us as the little Cupcake who could and did!
Our staff remains small and we are really more of a family than coworkers. In Minneapolis you have David, Laurel, Julie, Danny, Carly and Nicole while in Tennessee is Stephen, Chico, Myra, Larry, Lynn, Mark and Nanita. All of which, on most days have great senses of humor...one of my favorite stories is last year our lovely phone operator Nanita answered the phone to an angry customer who was complaining about the service he was receiving...He concluded with asking her if we were running One Hundred 80 Degrees out of our kitchen...Nanita giggled to herself and replied...No sir...we moved out of there about two weeks ago!
I hope this answers a lot of those things people have been wondering for the last couple of years. If your a store owner, thank you for your support of Glitterville and One Hundred 80 Degrees and if your a shopper who loves our products, thank you for supporting the retailers who carry our products. We realize it takes us all to keep the Glitter going!
Make every day a holiday!
Stephen
