In the old days, if a small to mid-sized business was hit by a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, the owner was often fortunate if all he or she lost was the business. Nowadays, thanks to the Internet and e-commerce sites, small companies have a fighting chance to survive and recoup.
Mignon Faget Ltd., based in New Orleans, is not only relying on its Web site, http://www.mignonfaget.com, to rebuild its business, but also to raise money to rebuild the city itself. Ten percent of the proceeds made from the sales of the 22 items in Faget’s Fleur de Lis collection of jewelry will be designated for Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Mitchell J. Landrieu’s 4-Point Plan for the Rebirth of New Orleans and Louisiana.
“And we need the money, too. We have to rehire the people we had to lay off,” Mignon Faget’s executive vice president Virginia Saussy said with a mix of grit and regret.
Unlike a lot of small multichannel retailers, Mignon Faget has a long history of cause-related promotions, mostly for local charities in New Orleans, which is both the source of the inspiration for her jewelry designs as well as the core of her customer base. While such causes as the NO/AIDS Task Force or the New Orleans Preservation Resource Center are typical, she did go national with a 9/ll promotion to help New York City rebuild.
Traditionally, the catalog and Web site accounted for about 10% to 20% of Mignon Faget’s retail sales. Now, that number is 100% since all four of the Faget boutiques in New Orleans are closed. Wholesale, not as affected by Katrina, accounts for approximately half of the company’s sales.
For at least two weeks, the company has been fulfilling orders out of the back of a suburban store otherwise closed for business. Faget hopes to reopen her boutiques in Magazine Street and the Lakeside Mall by the end of the month. The shop in Canal Place however is closed indefinitely because it was looted and badly damaged, as were many of the stores in the upscale French Quarter mall.
In the midst of Katrina’s aftermath, Faget noticed that many of her customers were placing more and more orders online, mostly from the Fleur de Lis collection. It was more than just a few of the 65,000 active collectors on Faget’s database who began ordering the Fleur de Lis pendant (sterling silver, $35; gold, $145), power brooch (sterling silver, $275; gold, $1,500), and pearl necklace (sterling silver, $110; gold, $350). While the pendant has become the most popular item, Saussy said, the brooch alone has had a 150% jump in sales.
Saussy explained the popularity of items from the collection. Those Faget customers were looking for a souvenir that encapsulated everything that New Orleans meant to them. And the fleur de lis, actually an iris, was the symbol of the kings of France, which New Orleans retained after it became part of the United States. The iris, incidentally, is the state flower of Louisiana.
Saussy added that there was also another layer of meaning behind the choice of the fleur de lis. Legend has it that as Eve wept upon the explosion from the Garden of Eden, everywhere her tears fell, irises grew.
“And that’s how we feel about it,” Saussy said. “We feel we’ve been expelled from our very own Garden of Eden.”
