ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9604010094
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITER
For years, Ann Bracken's family members could not eat on the dining room table. Then, they could not use part of the basement or the second garage.
Today, the Bracken family has full access to the house now that one of its occupants has moved out.
Bracken's business, a wholesale gift and home accessories supplier called Coal Bank Hollow, now is ensconced in a 4,800-square-foot space in Blacksburg's Gables Shopping Center.
It's a good thing. Coal Bank Hollow has grown from a two-woman operation - Bracken started the business in 1985 with a friend who has since moved - to a business with 14 full- and part-time employees, 11 subcontractors and an inventory of more than 25,000 individual wood panels.
The company specializes in hand-painted wooden gifts and home accessories, including calendars, note pads and clipboards.
"It's amazing to watch how fast it's grown," said Cheryl Johnson, who has worked at the company for three years.
Bracken began the business about 10 years ago as a creative outlet and extra-income generator after leaving a project engineering job at Hoechst Celanese to raise her children. She had always been interested in crafts and began to make country folk art using stenciling after realizing that the genre was popular.
She teamed up with a friend who made other types of crafts so they could share a booth at crafts fairs.
After her friend moved, Bracken continued the business and began focusing on the most popular product - hand-painted, wooden-framed calendar with paper pages. She worked on the designs, developed coordinating pieces, and began selling the items through the "Country Sampler" magazine in addition to local fairs.
Bracken soon enlisted an artist to do the painting and color work for the designs she developed - a practice she continues on a larger scale. Two full-time artists and one part-timer work for Coal Bank Hollow, which is looking to hire more.
Eventually, Bracken began to worry that larger businesses might take her design ideas. Obtaining a design patent proved too expensive, time-consuming and, in the end, difficult to monitor, so Bracken decided to move Coal Bank Hollow from retail to wholesale in 1993.
Selling more of the products at a faster pace, Bracken said, would circulate her designs enough that they could not be copied as easily.
"There's very little protection for creative, original pieces in my market, the wholesale craft market," Bracken said.
At the time of the switch, she had only one employee and the production work was being done in her home. Soon, she had to hire more employees and contractors who could work from home to make and assemble the products. Much of the production work is still done in homes.
In 1994, the volume became more than Bracken's basement and garage workshop could handle. Coal Bank Hollow moved into the back of the shopping center in Blacksburg near Ken's Music - a 1,200-square-foot space that became too small within a few months.
Bracken moved her business to its current location, toward the back of Gables Shopping Center, in May 1995. Though the space is used mostly for assembly, packaging and shipping - and looks much like a small-scale factory - there is also a retail shop at the location that features mostly Coal Bank Hollow products.
The idea behind the retail shop is to have one place where all Coal Bank Hollow crafts could be found. Because the company is toward the back of Gables Shopping Center, people who find it feel they have discovered a treasure.
``I used to say I'd like a dime for any time someone said, `I didn't know you were back here,''' said Emily Cohen, the retail manager.
About 95 percent of Coal Bank Hollow's business, however, is wholesale. You can find Coal Bank Hollow products at the Hotel Roanoke and Peaks of Otter gift shops, Virginia Tech bookstores, Heironimus and local crafts fairs such as the Brush Mountain Arts and Crafts Fair this weekend in Blacksburg.
The company also is working with larger companies such as Pfalzgraff, a Pennsylvania-based stoneware maker, and Ohio-based basketmaker Longaberger. Coal Bank Hollow has designed custom products with these companies' designs.
Items with Coal Bank Hollow's original designs also are featured in the Miles Kimball's "Just Between Us" national catalog.
The transition to wholesale has not been seamless. Companies like Coal Bank Hollow have to sell a lot of merchandise to make a profit.
Though Bracken would not release exact figures, she did say gross sales tripled in the second year of entering the wholesale business and have been rising ever since.
"Wholesale business is nothing like retail," she said. "The customers are different, the pricing is different."
Coal Bank Hollow customers always are something new. Bracken creates a new design about every three months and a new product every six months with input and feedback from her staff, whom she calls ``treasures.'' Though the staff works on tight deadlines and demands, the atmosphere is fairly laid-back, employees say.
"It's a challenge and a nice place to work," Johnson said.
Ultimately, Coal Bank Hollow is a family business. Like Bracken, who has three children, most of her employees also have families. As long as the work is done, no one is discouraged from leaving work to pick up a child from school or a dentist's appointment.
"We designed the business to suit us," Bracken said.
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff. Ann Bracken's Coal Bank Hollow employsby CNB14 full- and part-time workers, and 11 subcontractors and has an
inventory of more than 25,000 individual wood panels. color.