Gina B. Designs Turns 20

In the late 1970s, Gina Bugee was a homemaker with two small children who began drawing pen and ink house portraits for friends and family, and printed them on notecards. Soon she was doing them for realtors as well. But, as she said, "It got tedious. So I started dabbling in watercolors." Bugee branched out beyond houses, and started making greeting cards for friends before being encouraged by a local retailer to do a line of cards. Gina painted up some samples of floral designs, took them around to shops and boutiques, and whatever they chose she'd go home and paint to order.

But success eventually made that process unworkable. "After I painted about a thousand cards, I went to a commercial printer and had them printed," she said.

In October 1984 Gina founded Gina B. Designs and by the following year her fledgling company had 15 card designs with a print run of 2,000 each. Though the cards were no longer made by hand, she maintained their "hand painted appeal" by using recycled paper stock that emulated watercolor paper.

Gina gradually grew the business, and expanded the line to include notepads, journals, gift enclosures, invitations, photo cards, recipe cards, and more. Ten years ago, Gina B. Designs moved to its current studio and warehouse facility in Plymouth, Minnesota. The 14,000-square-foot space houses 20 employees, all women. Now, Gina B. Designs offers hundreds of designs sold in more than 13,000 stores.

While Bugee is proud of her business' growth, she says she doesn't plan to get any bigger than she has to. "We've grown just enough to stay in the marketplace. My whole reason for being in business is not to be that big, but to remain competitive so we can have a great place to work and keep having fun."