A Gift Store Finds Its Niche

Barbara Sheehan Segal has had a lot of experience with the gift industry in big cities. In Los Angeles, she served as the West Coast advertising director for Gifts & Dec from 1989 to 1994. Then she moved to Chicago and started her own rep group, G&GG At Your Service, with a showroom in the Chicago Merchandise Mart.

But she claimed that retail was her real love, and to fulfill that love Segal opened a gift store, Soiree, and matched it with an online virtual store, www.soiree-gifts.com. Soiree specialized in gourmet products and tableware with an accent on French and French-inspired lines. Originally, the gift store's mission was to help market the Web site, which had become G&GG's retail arm.

"I found that in order to be successful on the Internet, you needed to have a storefront," Segal said. "But at the same time, I found out that it's tough being an independent gift retailer in a big city like Chicago." She was about to find out how tough: In the fall of 2000, the Soiree store was torn down to make way for a high-rise office building. Barbara found herself without a home for her store and without a store for her Web site.

At about the same time, she became engaged to a man who lived in the Washington, DC, area. The fortuitous event would also be an opportunity to try her (retail) luck in a smaller market. She chose Annapolis, Maryland. A community of 35,000, it is home to the U.S. Naval Academy, a popular tourist destination, and just the kind of place where Soiree could carve out its own niche.

Segal sought a location in the city's downtown historical district. She soon learned that opening the new store there would be very challenging, both because of the scarcity and expense of commercial space and the strict building standards imposed by the Annapolis Historical Society.

In November 2000, Barbara leased a 1,200-square-foot former clothing store situated on the cobblestoned Main Street. But the space in the 1879 building needed a lot of renovation to suit the type of product that Soiree offered. First, Segal had a series of half walls that divided the interior removed, and replaced the old wood floors with cut stone. She also covered the unsightly peg-board walls with drywall, which she painted in muted amber and deep red tones to match the subtle elegance of the merchandise Soiree offered. The renovation created office space in the rear of the store, which is now separated by French doors and equipped with custom-made cabinetry and fixtures designed by California Closets.

To display product, rows of shelves were installed, including several shelves with pitched surfaces to show linens. But the pièce de résistance of Soiree's visual merchandising plan is a 19th-century, carved-oak dining table used for displays. "People always ask if the table is for sale," said Segal, "But I can't bring myself to part with it."

Perhaps the most challenging element of opening the new store turned out to be — literally — the storefront, which bore a tattered awning that had clearly seen better days. "Getting all the permits approved with the Annapolis Historical Society took a long time," Segal mused. But when all the details were finally worked out, Soiree had a brand new black awning that fit the Historical Society's requirements, and the kind of storefront that would be sure to attract customers.

The new Soiree opened in February 2001. As it did in Chicago, the Soiree/Annapolis store offers design themes and merchandise that focus on entertaining in the kitchen and dining room, emphasizing French and French-inspired lines from manufacturers such as Joly Marion, Revol, Serge Lesage, and Le Cordon Bleu. Product categories include gourmet, tabletop, porcelain, linens, and rugs. While the store emphasizes foreign merchandise, Segal noted that Soiree only buys from companies with U.S. distribution centers. In addition, she always arranges to have exclusive retail rights within her zip code in order to help make the store a truly unique destination for shoppers in the area.

The new Soiree serves as the brick-and-mortar base for soiree-gifts.com, as well as a retail outlet for Segal's wholesale rep group G&GG, which still maintains an office in Chicago.

According to Segal, business at the new store is booming. Soiree has experienced a much higher volume of customers in its new location than it ever did in Chicago, and every day customers point how beautiful the store looks, and how delightful it is to have a store of that caliber in Annapolis. In part, they have Los Angeles and Chicago to thank for that.