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(a) Mary closed all her stores except the St. Louis flagship, after realizing that
retail was more than a side business. “I don’t look at that as a defeat or a
failing, just as a change,” she says. “You can learn from anything that happens,
bad or good.” (b) An early business card.
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Text by Darci Smith
Mary Engelbreit’s voice echoes in a nearly empty room. Her company, Mary
Engelbreit Studios, has moved into a new space, one that’s “bright and nice and
warm.” Soon it will be filled with cute characters that sprang from her
imagination and now adorn 6,500 products and net nearly $100 million in retail
sales each year.
By now, most of us know that the Princess of Quite a Lot
spent hours of her childhood holed up in her “studio” (a tiny linen closet),
drawing pictures to go with the stories her mother told her. She copied the
style of artists she admired: Johnny Gruelle of Raggedy Ann and Andy and
fairy-tale illustrators Kay Nielsen, Arthur Rackham, and Jessie Willcox Smith.
“I never went to art school. I drew stuff over and over, working really hard to
get things the way I wanted them to look.”
After high school, her boss at an
advertising agency taught her invaluable skills for making a living as an
artist, such as how to charge for art and when to protect it. Mary’s first major
success, nearly 30 years ago, stemmed from 12 greeting cards she took to a
stationery trade show. A publishing company approached her about doing a
calendar, and then New York Magazine featured one of her cards, giving her
instant legitimacy.
MARY’S TRIED-AND-TRUE TIPS
Hoping to turn your art into business? Some advice
from Mary:
Do your homework. What kind of products are your illustrations
appropriate for? What companies might be interested in your style? “Have a
focused sense of what you do and where it might fit in the market,” Mary says.
Go to trade shows. “It’s really helpful for beginners to know what’s out
there.”
Protect yourself and your art. Mary counts herself lucky that
nobody stole the drawings she didn’t copyright during her early years. “If you
reach the point where you’re ready to start sending stuff out, you need to learn
about copyrights and trademarks.”
The She-EO of Everything page
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