On Mother`s Day four years ago, Trudi Smolenski helped her then-7-year-old pack his favorite toys, drove him to his father`s house and returned childless and speechless.
”I wanted to say so much to him,” Smolenski said about relinquishing custody of Christopher, ”but I couldn`t. I was a zombie. The words wouldn`t come.”
Today the words come in 10 succinct verses, each printed on glossy stock and published by Tristopher`s Greetings, the card company Smolenski owns and runs in Schaumburg.
Her speciality line, called We`re Divorced, is designed to help other divorced parents stay connected with children they no longer see day-to-day. As Chris explained, ”There aren`t many cards about divorce stuff. These make you feel better if you miss your Mom or Dad.”
The concept, and the business, have yet to receive a first birthday card. Last summer, Smolenski, now 38, was working as a financial consultant for UNI- FIN, an asset-based lender in Chicago. Her job took her to ailing businesses around the country, saving those that could be saved, closing those that couldn`t.
Last June, she paid a call to Joli Greeting Cards in Libertyville and immediately recommended a mercy killing for the firm. But L.H. Tayne, chairman of the board at UNI-FIN, disagreed. He admitted the company had problems, but he thought Smolenski could solve them-by taking over. ”She has a creative mind,” he said. ”I thought she`d be able to do it.”
Tayne had shown his faith in Smolenski before. One day during lunch, Smolenski, in tears, confessed her darkest secret. Although she held a high-powered job, made a stunning salary and drove a Cadillac, she had never attended high school.
Smolenski, who was born in New Jersey, grew up on the Northwest Side of Chicago. At 15, she dropped out to help support her divorced mother and two younger sisters. She put in time as a secretary, a manicurist and office manager, teaching herself business basics at the library and by pestering her colleagues with questions.
She joined an asset-based lender (one who lends money against all assets, including accounts receivable, not just real estate)as a marketing rep, and over the course of three jobs, worked her way up to financial troubleshooter at UNI-FIN. She spent three years with the company.
Tayne shrugged off the news. ”She went through the school of hard knocks,” he said. ”Her basic intelligence and common sense factor may be as good for what she does as an academic education.”
Smolenski later was diagnosed and treated for a learning disability, then enrolled at Shimer College in Waukegan.
By last July, Smolenski was the sole owner of Joli Greeting Cards` assets and debts. She renamed it Tristopher`s, a combination of her name and her son`s. In August she rented a 10,000-square-foot space in Schaumburg, moved the film library and remaining stock through a rainstorm and set out to learn the business.
”She`s a quick study,” said Jory Siegel, 39, president of Universal Press Inc., in Niles. Siegel prints for Tristopher`s and three other local card companies.
Smolenski inherited from Joli an extensive line of special-occasion and everyday cards, mostly cute or whimsical messages for holidays, birthdays and ordinary days. She`s retained about 650 of these designs and added about 150 new ones.
She slept through her biggest idea.
By the time she took the helm at Tristopher`s, Smoleski had been divorced eight years and, after losing a long and expensive custody battle, had been living apart from her son for three.
”The hardest part was not seeing his little face every morning in his little footsie pjs,” she said. Chris stays with Smolenski in her Schaumburg home Wednesday evenings and every other weekend.
Maintaining a good relationship with Chris was and is her first priority. ”We make marriage vows, to love and honor,” she said. ”I think we should also have divorce vows-to try to still have love and respect, especially when kids are involved. You`re still the same family, but the rules are different.”
Chris must have been thinking along the same lines. One day he stood up in class and announced, ”We`re divorced.”
Smolenski knew what he meant. ”I needed to explain in words about our separation, without my son feeling sad. There was nothing I could send to him besides a card that said `You`re a great kid.` ”
The answer came to her in a dream.
She dreamed she saw a woman on Michigan Avenue buying a card to send to her child. In the morning, her We`re Divorced specialty line was under way.
Smolenski called Shirl Thomas, a free-lance card writer from Fountain Valley, Calif. ”I thought it was a nice idea,” said Thomas, 56. ”It`s too bad there`s a market for them.”
Thomas had no trouble with the assignment. ”All I had to do was get in touch with my own feelings,” she said. ”I thought about a child feeling alone and scared. I thought about the love I feel for my own grandchildren.” All three of Thomas` children have been through divorces. One of her granddaughters, then 9, helped edit.
The result, a set of 10 cards written by Thomas and illustrated with simple line drawings by Carol Frueh of Gurnee, seeks to reassure children and their non-custodial parents.
In one, a mother and daughter hold hands under the line, ”I wish we could always be hand in hand.” Inside it continues, ”but it helps to know, we`re always heart to heart!” Another reads ”Sometimes your parents don`t agree . . . but, when it comes to being proud of you, we sure do.” On the back, underneath the Tristopher`s logo, the hand-lettered credit reads
”(We`re Divorced) inspired by Chris.”
”Clinically they`re excellent,” said psychiatrist Robert Charles Powell, who practices in Palatine and Winnetka. ”Any good card says things a person has trouble saying.”
”It`s always a problem that some non-custodial parents can end up feeling divorced from the child,” said attorney Michael Falconer, who has represented Smolenski. ”They need to reach out to kids to say, `I`m not abandoning you just because we`re divorced.` I keep the cards around to give to clients.”
The cards, which retail for $1.25 in gift shops and drug stores around the country, are already attracting attention.
”I have never seen anything of that nature,” said Steve Schneider, associate editor of New York-based Greetings Magazine, who says he reviews five new card lines a day. ”As families get more complicated, there`s got to be more and more things of this nature. The challenge is to do it tastefully, and these cards do that. I think there`s quite a market for it.”
The magazine ran a short article about We`re Divorced in its March issue. Chris, now a 5th-grader at Our Lady of Peace Catholic School in Darien, has his own method of drumming up sales: ”Sometimes I stand in a store and say, `That`s a good card.` Then people go buy it. It worked a couple of times.”
Even without Chris` help, customers are catching on. ”When the sales rep told me about it, I said I`m sure they`re not for everybody,” said Lynn Schwartz, owner of the Card and Gift Gallery in Schaumburg, who carries Tristopher`s everyday and divorce lines. ”But people have been looking a lot. To a parent in this situation, it`s a big relief. They haven`t been able to send a card before.”
Not that everyone wants to. Tom Welnowski, manager of River City Market in Chicago, expected the cards to be funny, not serious.
And the writer Thomas said: ”My one big complaint is I`d rather not see
`We`re Divorced` on the back. It limits the market.”
It`s a tough market to crack. According to industry analyst E. Gray Glass, about 85 percent of the $5 billion U.S. greeting card market is controlled by giants Hallmark, American Greetings and Gibson. Another 10 large companies split the next 10 percent, leaving nearly 1,000 smaller companies, including Tristopher`s, to divvy up the rest.
Defining a unique niche, analysts agree, is the best way to gain a foothold. That`s the tactic Tristopher`s is using: emphasizing We`re Divorced (14 new cards are on the drawing board), plus new lines that tune in to lottery mania and current news events.
”I was struck by how specific a lot of Tristopher`s titles were,” said Schneider of Greetings Magazine. ”That`s a big trend in this business: going for a very well-defined narrow audience.”
So far, so good. ”The company`s doing substantially better than a year ago, under Joli,” said Tayne.
According to Smolenski, her cards are now available in more than 400 stores, up from 250 when she took over.
While We`re Divorced has moved slowly, the biggest hit, according to Jonas Morris, Tristopher`s vice president of sales and marketing, is the Lotto line. Customers tuck a lottery ticket inside and hope for the best. The company sold out of its first 100 dozen shipped after the card was introduced in lastk month.
Morris said he`s expanded the sales force to cover 25 states, up from one when he signed on in December. He plans to add the rest of the states by the end of the year.
”The company is holding its own,” said Tayne. ”It`s not setting the world on fire, but I didn`t expect it to in the first year.”
Smolenski`s high-energy style seems capable of igniting fires. On good days, it keeps her staff of 20 laughing-and scampering.
On bad days, when the fatigue and pains of multiple sclerosis keep her home, she relies on staff, including best friend and secretary Judy Knowles, 46, of Arlington Heights, to keep the ship afloat.
Smolenski`s focus remains Chris, who likes to shoot baskets or play hide- and-seek in the warehouse on visiting days. He beams from beneath track and baseball trophies in the photos that clutter her office wall and desk.
”All I ever wanted to be was a mother,” she said. ”I`m everything but. Isn`t that ironic?” Photo by Milbert Orlando Brown.
