Ivy Cottage adds retail shop in Corporate Centre

The shop is located in American National Property and Casualty’s Corporate Centre, 1949 E. Sunshine St., Ste. 2-105.

The retail shop is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday and is open to the public, Obeidat said.

In its first week, Obeidat said, the Ivy Cottage shop had about 180 visitors. She’s working on a program offering discounts on certain days of the week to draw in more retail customers.

Obeidat said that officials with ANPAC, one of Ivy Cottage’s clients, suggested that she open the gift shop.

“We’re waiting for space for our corporate office to open up here,” she said.

The end goal, she added, is to get the business, which she started at home after being injured in an accident with a drunken driver, completely out of her house and into its own location.

Ivy Cottage offers corporate gift programs for employee anniversaries, customer thank-you gifts, company anniversaries, new hires and other employee recognition.

The programs are customized so that clients – and the gift recipients – are satisfied.

For example, she said, with the employee birthday program, employees of Ivy Cottage clients fill out a form that asks about their interests and what types of things they collect. When birthday time comes, each employee’s gift is created around those interests and items.

“So if you like bath and body (products), lavender, chocolate and picture frames, that’s what you’ll get,” she said. “If you like fishing and golfing, those are the kinds of things you’ll get.”

Gifts can be boxed, put in baskets or in gift chests, which Obeidat said are popular not only for employee gifts but also for customer appreciation gifts.

Obeidat founded Ivy Cottage in 2003, making gift baskets in her home.

“I quickly discovered it wasn’t going to be gift baskets. There was no way from home I was going to sell gift baskets and do anything I wanted to do,” she said.

However, Obeidat, who worked as a state liaison for Head Start and has a degree in administration, decided that if she focused on corporate gifts, she could branch out into other services. She added event planning in 2004 and in September will begin offering training on corporate cultures.

“I’m working with (Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau) on special events,” she said. Come September, CVB will refer out-of-town convention speakers to Obeidat.

In addition to ANPAC, Obeidat’s client list includes BKD, Neale & Newman, Ollis & Co., ReGen Technologies and Great Southern Bank.

Laura Beaver, corporate services officer with Great Southern Bank, uses Ivy Cottage for appreciation gifts for her commercial customers.

“If I call Brenda, I know I can depend on her,” Beaver said. “I know that whatever she creates for me, it will be very well done and very tasteful and that it will delivered on time.”

Beaver said that Ivy Cottage works with her to include items with the Great Southern logo in the gifts, but Obeidat also finds other items that suit the recipients well.

For instance, Beaver said, there was the time she needed a gift for a customer who was into Italian gourmet cooking.

“She put special pastas in there and even a cookbook on pasta and some bottles of olive oil,” Beaver said.

Ivy Cottage’s focus is on Springfield-area companies, but Obeidat said that through those relationships, her business is reaching out into other areas.

“ANPAC (has) a cash-back program, and there are 1,600 agents across the country who are going to be ordering gifts off our Web site,” Obeidat said.

This summer, Ivy Cottage will redesign its Web site, www.ivycottagegift

designs.com, to focus on its corporate programs.

Client companies are able to include logo items along with gift items that Ivy Cottage selects. Obeidat said that she works with 5,000 vendors from around the world to find her inventory.

Ivy Cottage’s 2004 revenues were $65,000 and Obeidat said her goal for 2005 is $250,000.

“My goal is to be a million-dollar company in five years, and I think we’re going to make it,” Obeidat said.

Eventually, she wants to get Ivy Cottage completely out of her home, where much of the assembly is still done. Ivy Cottage has grown from two to eight employees, with plans to add one or two more in the next few weeks.

Obeidat’s future growth plans also include adding a restaurant for corporate meetings or lunches, where customers could bring clients to dine – and have a gift waiting for them.

The restaurant will enable Ivy Cottage to create its own baked goods, which did not work out in the past.

“We rented a licensed kitchen from somebody who does wedding cakes, and at Christmas we offered cookies,” Obeidat said. With only word-of-mouth, Ivy Cottage sold 20,000 cookies, which proved to be too much to handle.

Plans for adding the restaurant may happen sooner than later, Obeidat said, because she’s got a couple of potential investors. She declined to name the investors, though, because nothing has been finalized.

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