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September 27, 2004

Bag of tricks | Accessories Unlimited's new owner pumps up the sales and marketing effort

By Sean Donahue
For 36 years, designer Chris Birchfield was something of a reluctant business owner. Though she loved creating the handbags and totes that helped build her Cornish company, Accessories Unlimited, into a 22-person shop distributing its products across the country and in Europe and Japan, she never enjoyed the sales and marketing work required to keep those bags on store shelves.

Unfortunately, Birchfield says, those duties grew more important over the decades, as the accessories market became a battleground for niche designers like Accessories Unlimited and huge brands such as Coach and Louis Vuitton. Amid the challenge of balancing design and marketing duties, Accessories Unlimited's sales began to slow, and this year, following three years of flat revenues, Birchfield began looking for a way out of the business side of the operation ˆ— without abandoning her design work.

She found a solution in John Milburn, who's spent his career focusing on the type of sales, marketing and distribution strategies that never really interested Birchfield. An industry acquaintance of Birchfield's, Milburn ran Milburn Marketing, a Portland-based manufacturers' representative that placed home décor products with retail chains such as Orvis and Vermont Country Store. After examining AU's business, he says he realized that the problems behind the company's flat sales weren't insurmountable.

In August, Milburn bought AU from Birchfield, keeping her on as the company's designer, and began implementing a plan he believes can build on Birchfield's three decades of success. "You've got a 36-year-old company that's done okay for some time," says Milburn. "To buy a company like that and be able to tweak the components that need to be tweaked, it's 200% easier than having an upstart."

Milburn's tweaks center on two growth strategies: lining up new sales representatives in key markets across the country and embarking on a new marketing and branding campaign to make Accessories Unlimited, and Chris Birchfield, better known names to consumers. Though Milburn and Birchfield won't disclose the terms of their deal or company revenues, Milburn's goal is to double the size of the company within five years.

With Milburn as company president, Birchfield is free to focus on designing new products that fit within what she sees as AU's niche: high-quality, high-end bags, priced between $15 and $180 and backed by a 100% repair or replacement guarantee, that use bright colors and unique fabrics to update traditional designs. She's also free to work on AU's private label projects, creating new designs for retailers or adding corporate logos to existing AU products for events such as Vanity Fair's annual Oscar party.

Besides keeping Birchfield happy, that design push will be crucial to AU's branding strategy, say accessories market experts, since creating distinctive products is essential to standing out in the competitive handbag market, which was worth about $5.5 billion in 2003, according to an estimate by Accessories Magazine.

Selling the story
One of the day-to-day responsibilities Birchfield found hardest to maintain was handling the company's relationships with its manufacturers' representatives, who act as independent sales representatives in given regions. During the past few years, she says she'd allowed contracts with three of the company's six reps to lapse, which contributed to the sales stagnation. "If you don't have the reps in [certain] areas, what happens is you may get an initial order or two, but then it sort of dies off because no one is showing them the new stuff that's coming along," says Birchfield.

Milburn, a former manufacturers' representative, understands that phenomenon completely, which is why the first thing he did as AU's new owner was add reps in the mid-Atlantic region, Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles. He says he's close to signing a new representative in Chicago and plans to look for one in Dallas, Texas, next.

What AU offers those representatives are products Birchfield says stand out for their "fashionably conservative" look ˆ— bright colors, hip but not too hip patterns and preppie styles that are in vogue again. Ann Triplett, owner of Person Triplett in Los Angeles and one of AU's new representatives, agrees that AU's line has niche appeal. "[Accessories Unlimited] has the style, packaging and colors that give it a California look, but with East Coast sophistication," says Triplett. "There are a lot of major companies in [the accessories business], but it's hard to find a company with good prices and quality and a style that looks like it will sell in California."

While building that sales network, Milburn also is working on the company's consumer brand identity. "Ask [wholesale] buyers within the accessories market and most people know who the company is, but if you ask Mrs. Smith in Boston who Accessories Unlimited is, she doesn't have a clue," says Milburn. "We need to get out there with that brand ID, sell the story and attach the brand to the product."

To do that, he's unveiled a new logo ˆ— a mod-looking "Au" in a red square ˆ— that will be embroidered on the company's bags, and is planning to place a card in every bag that tells the story of Chris Birchfield and company. Milburn also hired Freeport-based Evergreen Communications to handle public relations with accessories trade publications, and plans to eventually to roll out a trade advertising campaign.

Consumer brand awareness can be a critical advantage in the accessories market, particularly in convincing new retail outlets to carry a line, says Deborah Rudinsky, a merchandising manager with the fashion and accessories consulting company Henry Doneger Associates in New York. But she says the market also is fickle enough that a trendy design or hot product can move shoppers more than a well-known brand name, putting the onus on design. "In certain instances, the customer is looking at product and product design first," says Rudinsky. "She sees it, she likes it, she buys it."

Though Birchfield doesn't plan to chase short-term trends or veer too far from AU's established look, she says the sale of the company will allow her to concentrate on those types of new, stand-out designs ˆ— and not just in bags. Birchfield is looking to expand on her limited work in accessories such as belts and pillows, perhaps moving into the home décor market.

Designing new products, whether for AU or for private label customers, ultimately is what kept her in the business this long, she says, and is the reason she never considered retiring, even as she was looking to sell the company. "Before I go down for the final time," says Birchfield, "I'll probably sit up and say, 'Wait a minute ˆ— I have a great idea!'"

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