15 Gifted Women: Jenny Hammons
By Meredith Schwartz -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 11/9/2009
Jenny Hammons
Shonnie Bilin
Frances Gravely
Isadora Frost
Anne McGilvray
Maxine Burton
Susan Roghani
Joan Ulrich
Wendy Rosen
Anna Griffin
Barbara Baekgaard
Andrea Grossman
Andrea Sadek
Ande Rooney
Marian Sullivan
Owner
Jenny Hammons Company
Rep principal/sales manager Jenny Hammons joined the industry in 1971 as sales/marketing manager and later vice president marketing for several companies. In 1979, Jenny became a manufacturer’s rep for Small World Greetings, at which time she also hired the first Jenny Hammons associate. The year 1983 marked the opening of her first showroom in San Francisco. Jenny acquired Nancy Putney Associates in 1995, changing its name to Around the House, and later created the JH Home division. In 1998, she formed Jenny Hammons Company, encompassing Jenny Hammons Associates, JH Home, Around the House and Jenny Hammons Northwest. It included 26 sales associates and 12 other employees, representing more than 90 manufacturers. In 2002 Jenny closed JH Home. In 2006, she sold Around the House to The Barron Collection, and in 2008, Jenny Hammons Company headquarters moved to Healdsburg, CA. Hammons is executive board chair of Gift for Life.
Gifts & Decorative Accessories: What have your biggest challenges been?
Jenny Hammons: Keeping people motivated to do better, to pursue higher ideals, [and be] happy with their jobs. I think that I have been successful, but it was a challenge.
G&DA: What have been your greatest successes?
JH: My greatest success in the rep business itself has been the ability to attract and keep good professional sales reps with very low turnover, and my manufacturers who have been with me, some as many as 22 years. That’s been our success overall, as well as being able to keep a good reputation for hardworking reps and professional conduct.
G&DA: Do you think that as a woman you approached doing business differently?
JH: In terms of dealing with my reps and employees maybe I’m a little more compassionate; maybe sometimes too compassionate. But other than that I think most women are pretty driven these days, so I think it is pretty much the same as our male counterparts. I started in 1972 and I often was the only woman on the plane. I was living in Kentucky and traveling all over the country to tradeshows and meetings. One classic question would be, who takes care of your children when you’re traveling? Well, my husband. Would they have asked that of a man? I doubt it. If I was really friendly, which I usually am, sometimes people felt there was an invitation there. But I never felt that I was treated with any sort of difference than other male counterparts, at least on the surface. It just never occurred to me that it was a profession that was only pursued by a male. Whether other people felt that I have no idea. I just kept my head down and kept on working.
G&DA: How has being an executive affected your personal life and relationships and how do you deal with it?
JH: It hasn’t been easy. I travel a great deal, and early in my career I traveled about seven and a half months of the year. It did change me as a person and change my relationship with my then-husband; and I do believe it was somewhat responsible for me wanting to move on from that marriage. I have been married to my current husband for 30 years and I miss a lot of his social events and a lot of my kids’ ball games and so on. They’re grown now and they don’t seem to think it was such a big deal, but I missed it. Now, I just miss my dog and my husband.
G&DA: How and why did you get into business?
JH: It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I applied for a job for a government program and didn’t get it. About a year later the executive director called me because he had a different job. There was a startup high-end designer toy company they were funding to provide employment in Appalachia. I ended up vice president of marketing. I was doing a little consulting with a couple of small companies. One of them enticed me to move to California and work for them directly. More than a year later, I was getting antsy to do something on my own. Being on the manufacturing side, the one thing I never wanted to be was a rep, because I didn’t see how they could store all that information in their heads. The next thing I new, a large card line called Small World Greetings became available and I took it and started a rep group with no money. About three weeks later I hired a rep. That was in 1979.
G&DA: What advice would you give to a woman starting out in the business?
JH: You have to be a little tougher than maybe I was in the beginning. I took a lot of things very personally, and it was hard on me mentally and physically over the years. To me it was a personal relationship, and I think those days, unfortunately, are over. Relationships are certainly important, but you have to be very business-oriented and professional. We have been one big happy family, and that’s okay to a degree, but I think in this day and age you have to be more about business and profit. It used to be so much fun. The industry was young and we were all young together. It was just one big party; we worked hard but we also partied hard. It just made everything so exciting.
G&DA: What is the best — or most memorable — gift you ever received?
JH: I got a scrapbook for my 20th year in business. A group of my reps and my manager at the time put together a scrapbook of all our history up to that point. That was the nicest gift I’ve ever been given. It was just so heartfelt it made me cry.
To read the interviews with each of the other 14 Gifted Women, please click on their image at right.
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