In the old days, if a small to midsize enterprise was hit by a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, the owner was fortunate if all he or she lost was the business. Nowadays, thanks to the Internet, small companies have a fighting chance to survive and recoup.
New Orleans’ Mignon Faget Ltd. is not only relying on its Web site (www.mignonfaget.com) to rebuild its business, but also to raise money to rebuild the city. Ten percent of the proceeds made from sales of the 22 items in Fa-get’s Fleur de Lis jewelry collection will be designated for Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitchell J. Landrieu’s four-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,” said Mignon Faget’s executive vice president Virginia Saussy.
Unlike many small multichannel retailers, Mignon Faget has a long history of cause-related promotions, mostly for local charities in New Orleans — the source of the inspiration for Faget’s jewelry designs as well her core 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 9/11 promotion to help New York rebuild.
Traditionally, the catalog and Web site accounted for about 10% to 20% of Mignon Faget’s retail sales. Now it’s 100%, since all four of the Faget boutiques in New Orleans are closed. Wholesale, not as affected by Katrina, accounts for about half of the company’s sales.
For several weeks the company had been fulfilling orders out of the back of a suburban store otherwise closed for business. Faget hoped to reopen her boutiques in Magazine Street and the Lakeside Mall by the end of October. 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 from Faget’s database who began ordering the Fleur de Lis pendent (sterling silver, $35; gold, $145), power brooch (sterling silver, $275; gold, $1,500), and pearl necklace (sterling silver, $110; gold, $350). While the pendent has become the most popular item, Saussy said, the brooch alone has had a 150% jump in sales.
Those Faget customers were looking for a souvenir that encapsulated everything 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 another layer of meaning behind the choice of the fleur de lis. Legend has it that as Eve wept upon her expulsion 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.”
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