15 Gifted Women: Barbara Bradley Baekgaard
by Meredith Schwartz -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 11/9/2009
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| Shonnie Bilin |
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| Frances Gravely |
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| Isadora Frost |
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| Jenny Hammons |
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| Anne McGilvray |
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| Maxine Burton |
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| Susan Roghani |
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| Joan Ulrich |
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| Wendy Rosen |
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| Anna Griffin |
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| Andrea Grossman |
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| Andrea Sadek |
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| Ande Rooney |
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| Marian Sullivan |
Co-Founder
Vera Bradley Inc.
While on vacation in March of 1982, Patricia Miller and Barbara Bradley Baekgaard were awaiting a flight in Atlanta when they noticed a lack of feminine-looking luggage. Within weeks, the longtime friends created a company, named Vera Bradley after Barbara’s mother, to market and manufacture cotton quilted handbags and luggage. Located in Fort Wayne, IN, the company’s designs now adorn eyewear, tableware, fine linens, furniture and rugs. In the early 1990s, the loss of a friend to breast cancer inspired Patricia and Barbara to establish the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer, which to date has pledged more than $10 million to the Indiana University Cancer Center. .Barbara currently serves as a board member of the foundation as well as the I.U. Cancer Center Development Board. Among many other honors, she received the 2006 Gifts & Decorative Accessories Industry Achievement Award.
Gifts & Decorative Accessories: What have your biggest challenges been?
Barbara Baekgaard: My biggest challenge is keeping up with all the birthdays of my four children and 12 grandchildren. I see the family as a huge priority. You could say balancing family and business, but not really, because I see family as being a top priority.
G&DA: What have been your greatest successes?
BB: My greatest success is marrying my husband Peer Baekgaard. I met him in the gift industry; he was the president of the Chicago Gift Show and I was on the board. Will Little introduced us. And of course, my children and grandchildren. We just completed our $10 million pledge to breast cancer research and that was huge. We’ve been working on it for 14 years.
G&DA: Do you think that as a woman you approached doing business differently?
BB: Yes, I think we have some instinct that we listen to. I think we do do business differently; it is more collaborative.We ask for help more when we need it, just like asking for directions. It’s been easy being a woman because people always want to give you the answers. I don’t know if men do that.
G&DA: How has being an executive affected your personal life and relationships and how do you deal with it?
BB: I am lucky to have some family in the business with me, and six of my grandchildren live in Ft. Wayne, so it really hasn’t been difficult in that respect. It definitely affected my personal life because I married someone in the industry and we had that in common. My personal life is really involved in my business life; they really intertwine. My dear friends are part of the business and people I do business with become my friends. It has affected me in a very positive way; I can’t imagine being in any other industry.
G&DA: How and why did you get into business?
BB: I grew up in the gift industry. My father was in the gift industry, so it’s really the only life I’ve known. I remember going to gift shows as a little child. My partner Pat Miller and I started the business from an idea we had when we were travelling and noticed we didn’t see people with nice looking luggage. We each put in $250 dollars and started the business virtually the next day. We just jumped right into it; we didn’t know what we didn’t know.
G&DA: What advice would you give to a woman starting out in the business?
BB: My biggest advice would be: hire the right people. Hire people that are different, people that have something that you don’t have yourself. In our case, we knew we needed someone in finance. If you’re good at sales, you be the sales person; if you’re good at design, you be the designer, and then fill in those needs. Another thing: Hire people you want to be with, because these people become your family and friends. Make sure you protect the culture of the business that you’re starting and the person that you are, and then just keep going forward. We had a lot of hurdles over the years but we learned from all of them. Just keep thinking you can do it. The other thing I tell people is to go the gift show and see what else is out there. The rule I live by (it was actually my father’s) is: You sell yourself first, your company second and your product third. Your company has to back up your word. People don’t need your product.
G&DA: What is the best — or most memorable — gift you ever received?
BB: Recently it was the Hitman DVD. I just loved it and I turned around and gave it to everyone I knew. I do have one I treasure; it is a little bronze figurine from Denmark that I got from Peer when we got married.
To read the interviews with each of the other 14 Gifted Women, please click on their image at right.
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