Home Shopping Network

THE LOOK
The home shopping network

By Tina Cassidy, Globe Staff, 4/3/2003

Patti Pruett may not have realized it at the time, but she glimpsed the vortex of a trend in her living room last week, and she has a satin-lined clutch purse to prove it. When a bunch of her girlfriends descended on her Charlestown home for a meeting of their wine club, they decided to try something new: invite a South End handbag designer to show her wares. That pushed the conversation from chardonnay to chartreuse, a color used to line many of Allison Townsend’s creations.

Everyone left happy, with something that lasts much longer than a red-wine hangover.

”It’s personalized,” Pruett says of the private showing. ”People more than ever now appreciate handmade products because of what is going on in the world. If I was at a store and I saw a bag for $80, I’d be like, I can’t. But some of her bags still had the [sewing] pins in them. I just felt that it was a more qualified product because she was there and had put her own hand to it.”

Indeed, home sales parties, especially ones that revolve around clothing and accessories, are becoming increasingly popular, for several reasons: The economy is lethargic, the war in Iraq has people transfixed before their TV sets, and nesting has replaced splurging at the mall. Designers and small retailers with goods to sell are taking their products to the people, in their homes.

Meanwhile, many career women who have found themselves relieved of corporate jobs are turning to more creative home-based enterprises, making belts, stitching handbags, selling jewelry or vintage clothing. And they’re using the safer principal of ”viral marketing” — in which the people who attend parties tell their friends, who in turn have parties of their own — rather than investing in a storefront or selling to boutiques at a lower profit margin.

Next week, Tricia Mahoney could have hundreds of shopper moms parading through her contemporary Colonial home in Andover, where six vendors will offer everything from reworked 1950s skirts to Venetian glass necklaces.

”It’s a new way of thinking. Women in the suburbs want to shop like the urban women, and they want really cool, funky things that they can’t find in the suburbs. Or their lifestyles are crazy, they don’t have time to shop and to go to 12 different stores,” says Mahoney, who sells 14 lines of jewelry under the name StylishShe, a company she founded in October after maternity leave from CMGI, the Internet company that fell hard with the stock market, where she was director of corporate marketing.

”To hang out with your girlfriends, have a glass or two of wine, have some snacks, shop . . . It’s a relaxed environment,” she says. ”It’s all about having a really nice time. Women buy at these events, and they buy big. It is beyond what I ever thought this was going to be.”

What’s in it for the hostess? It varies, but often it’s a percentage of the party’s sales that can be applied to a purchase. Sometimes it’s a gift. For Pruett, it was the surprise of Townsend’s intentionally leaving behind one of her bags.

They’re buying into it, Neil Offen, president of the Direct Selling Association, says the concept of home sales parties has exploded since Sept. 11, 2001, “because people are nervous about going to shopping centers and the like and feel more comfortable buying from friends and neighbors in their communities.” He says he expects sales in 2003 will set new records.

Allison Townsend, 32, taught herself to sew and is using home shows to spread the work about her layered grosgrain ribbon purses and to see for herself what customers like. “It’s a way of selling without overhead,” she said, although her bags are for sale at the Beauty Mark on Charles Street. Townsend runs her business from her apartment (617-817-3189). “And, I have found that people really like to buy things from small businesses. I didn’t know that. A lot of women say they try to buy through smaller boutiques. They find a value in supporting other people. I think this is particular to handbags. There’s been a lot in the press how, on some levels, big names are having less cachet.”

Some designers launch their businesses with home parties, then phase the out after signing with a showroom, where retailers go to buy for their stores. Hadley Pollet (www.hadleypollet.com), a Boston belt designer, won’t purvey her belts in private home shows because she feels it undermines her retail sales in places such as Bergdorf Goodman, Henri Bendel and Eye of the Needle. She also say’s it’s a myth that buyers might pay less in a living room than in a store. “Some sell at retail prices and they just make more money,” she says.

Tricia Mahoney is hosting “Unique Boutique” at her home April 11 – 12, bringing together six vendors, including Tiffany Christian handbags and belts, remade vintage clothing from VintageFresh (www.vintagefresh.com), and a bunch of jewelry lines she sells through her start-up business, StylishShe (www.stylishshe.com)

Maureen Dahill, owner of Maude Mange in South Boston, is closing the popular vintage-clothing store in June to focus on internet and home sales because she’s found that so many people don’t have the schedules conducive to shopping during regular retail hours.She says she caters to the partygoers’ sizes and tastes. The host receives a $50 gift certificate (www.maudemango.com).

Even smaller stores are getting in on the trunk show trend by inviting designers to visit in the shop, then creating an after-hours party atmosphere for customers. Matsu, a Newbury Street boutique, is hosting Me & Ro jewelry April 11 from 5 to 8 p.m. Matsu owner Dava Muramatsu says she’s also considering breakfast or dinner sales, in which a select list of clients can invite 10 of their friends and shop. She’s hosted a women’s club meeting in the store, where she lit candles and incense, poured wine, and served food. The next thing she knew, she was doing a clothing makeover. “The environment unleashed all this”, she says.

This story ran on page D2 of the Boston Globe on 4/3/2003.