It`s a Monday afternoon and Lynn Brandys is giving a tour of her 4,000-square-foot home accessories store in Oakbrook Center.
She takes time out while a pair of Midwest-based salesmen wait in the store to discuss their merchandise.
A few minutes later, a New York sales representative sweeps in, gives Brandys a hug and stands by to talk about her current line.
Later, Brandys must get back to her Addison warehouse to check on her national wholesale accessories business.
There she may even sit down at her own work table, unwind some silk ribbon or imported lace from its spool, pick up her trusty glue gun and add some trim to next season`s designs for her Lynn Brandys Collection.
Then, of course, she`ll need to look at progress in manufacturing and shipping. And in the weeks ahead, there are yet dozens of decisions to make as the sole buyer for her store: what will be hot and what will not.
But for Lynn Brandys, it`s all in a day`s work.
In fact, with all this on her mind, this day`s tour of L. Brandys, the store, is only briefly interrupted when the proprietor is needed on the phone. In her bright, easy voice, she says to the caller, ”This is Lynn Brandys.”
And this is Lynn Brandys. All of it. The Oak Brook store. The designing. Her national catalog collection, which brings her home accessories to retailers across the country, featuring about 100 items from bedding to ornaments, decorative candles to beveled mirrors.
She also oversees manufacturing at her Addison plant. (Brandys`
responsibilities were streamlined recently, when she closed her Naperville store and transplanted her Texas manufacturing center to Addison.)
The Lisle resident has most certainly come a long way since taking a part-time job as a sales clerk in a North Aurora gift store 20 years ago.
”She has such a special touch,” said Jacque Wright, who carries The Lynn Brandys Collection, among others, in her Atlanta and Dallas showrooms.
”She can take just anything and make it look wonderful. She`s one of the most talented people I`ve ever known. She puts her heart into everything she does.”
Wright has seen the Brandys touch in action many times.
”We go to a lot of the (accessories) shows together. We walk the aisles, and there are hundreds and hundreds of booths,” Wright said.
”She will pick up one little thing here and then maybe 10 aisles over she`ll pick up another nothing item. By then, I will have completely forgotten about the first one. But not Lynn. She`ll say, `Wouldn`t this be wonderful with this, and I can take it and add this and that.` Her wheels just keep turning. It`s amazing.”
Brandys` ideas have earned her a national reputation. Among the ”really exciting things,” as Brandys refers to them, have been the high-profile customers and awards.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan received Brandys Christmas ornaments, as a 1984 White House thank-you note will attest.
Donald Trump ordered 1,000 Brandys moire boxes as gifts for the opening of one of his Atlantic City hotels. Several years ago, Gifts and Decorative Accessories Magazine, the industry`s oldest publication, bestowed its coveted merchandising achievement award on Brandys` Naperville store for outstanding merchandise display.
L. Brandys, the 6-year-old Oak Brook store, carries that same display tradition. The store sparkles with a mostly feminine, frilly array of items, ranging in price from 25 cents for a bath oil bead to $500 for a queen-size damask coverlet.
Every corner, nook and cranny has evidence of the Brandys touch.
”People don`t know what they want until they see it,” said Phyllis Sweed, editor and co-publisher of Gifts and Decorative Accessories Magazine, based in New York City. ”Lynn has such an eye for color and fabrics that it places her products into a whole environment for her customers.”
L. Brandys, as one of only a few independent stores at sprawling Oakbrook Center, is not affiliated with any major company like a department store might be. The store now has 18 employees, many of them longtime help. Personal contact allows Brandys a chance to save special items, such as signed collectibles, for customers.
Brandys was a high school biology teacher and later worked in computers, but the birth of her sons put her career on a new course. After having her second son, she accepted the part-time job at the North Aurora gift shop and felt a spark there that she wisely decided to pursue.
”I just went in to help, but I loved playing around with the accessories and working at the store. I decided I should do it on my own,” Brandys said. She persuaded her husband, Bob, a pharmacist, to take the chance with her. Soon after, the young family moved to Calumet City, where relatives could help with baby-sitting chores while Lynn and Bob launched their own store there, The Potpourri.
Laughing about it at the warehouse recently, Lynn and Bob said that their first leap into the retail business was an easy one, mostly because of a contingency plan.
Their families weren`t too thrilled that the two were turning their backs on their educations and careers.
Yet, said Lynn, ”We decided we would give it three years, and if it didn`t work we`d move far away from everybody so nobody could say, `I told you so.”`
But there was no need to run. The store thrived for nearly 15 years, during which time Brandys returned to school to study interior design. But when the South Side saw economic troubles, because of area plant closings, Brandys looked for a growth area. She set her sights on Naperville.
L. Brandys in Naperville opened in 1982, and for two years, Brandys ran The Potpourri as well as the new Naperville shop.
”I had both stores until Naperville really got on its feet,” Brandys said. ”Then we closed the store on the South Side.”
But always in the back of Brandys` mind was Oak Brook. Even though the Naperville store was successful, it was too small for Brandys` growing plans. ”We needed to be in another spot, and either Oak Brook or north Michigan Avenue was my dream, even back when I opened The Potpourri,” Brandys said.
Since opening in 1986, the store has done well, now taking in more than $1 million a year in gross sales.
The Naperville site was closed in October, when the strip mall location lost anchor stores and some of its draw. Now Brandys says she can concentrate on Oak Brook and increase her national distribution business.
According to Brandys, going national was the next logical step.
Never content to simply be a seller of home accessories, Brandys, from the start, had her hand in design. In both her Calument City and Naperville stores, she did custom interior decorating, even making house calls. She loves fabrics, and to help her clients, she started selling yardage (and still does in Oak Brook). From there she created special bedding and elaborate pillows that led her to add matching decorative items of all kinds.
The real push came about four years ago when representatives of a Dallas silk flower company visited the Oak Brook store.
”They said the displays and what I did was fantasic and would I do it for them,” said Brandys. She agreed and initially opened her wholesale line as a new department for the Dallas firm Seville Industries.
That association lasted just two years before Brandys took over her own distribution. The Lynn Brandys Collection hasn`t even completed two selling seasons yet but has already tallied about a half million dollars in gross sales.
Since January, manufacturing has been based out of her 3,600-square-foot Addison warehouse, which she agrees suits her much better. From Addison, there are eight workers who produce and distribute The Brandys Collection.
Raw parts, such as simple tin pails and plain round balls, are transformed, said Brandys, ”to the nth degree.”
She gives a lot of credit to her husband, who handles the financial side of the business. ”We`ve gotten through the first years where he`s proven himself with his end,” Lynn said. ”And I`ve proven myself with my end and there`s a mutual trust here now.”
When the Brandyses do walk through the door of their house, surely it is as decorated as the store, right?
Lynn and Bob looked at one another and laughed.
”When we moved there, I had two stores, I was doing things on the side, had my line, and you want to know about the house?” Lynn responded, laughing. But the couple has begun to redecorate their home in the Brandys style.
”It`s starting to get there. You could probably come in and see sections that look like what you would expect,” Lynn said. ”The house in general is not frilly. A touch of fussiness, but not too much.”
The rooms once belonging to her grown sons are finished in ”understated masculine,” said Lynne. And down the hall, the master bedroom is close to being done, too. That`s good, because with Lynn`s non-stop schedule, there is just one leisure pastime she can still enjoy.
Quipped Bob, ”She sleeps.”
