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Kids Home Accents beginning to take off

Kids Accents owner Meriza George displays some of her designs.

NORTH BAY – Meriza George’s new business is beginning to take off.

Although she was happy with the response from potential customers who came in to check out Kids Home Accents after her grand opening on Sept. 2, sales were slow for the first month.

“I’ve had a very good response talking to the customers,” says George, a Nipissing First Nation band member. “They’re glad that these items are available.”

“I think that it’s just a matter of time until the advertising gets out.”

Since October, sales have been increasing.

“Retail in September was slow overall,” George says. “People were focusing on back-to-school and clothing.”

“In October, it certainly picked up.” And because retail is such a seasonal business, George is now gearing up for the Christmas sales season by changing her radio and newspaper ads. “I’ve changed the focus of the ads to smaller accent pieces that I feel will sell during the Christmas season,” she says. “I will be bringing in more products, more variety.”

This past week, George brought in a bench-type piece, in white and a natural stain, that has an opening for storage which fits two wicker baskets for just that purpose.

So far, some of her best sellers have been hanging starlights, bed canopies and wicker baskets. The starlights look like a 3-D star that hangs from the ceiling and the bed canopies hang from the ceiling down towards the floor at the head of the bed. “Those are items that I’ve already had to reorder,” she says. George explains that there is no other store like hers in the North Bay and Sudbury area, and her product lines are just not available anywhere else in the area.

“Most people travel down to the Toronto area to find these kinds of items,” she says. “I have three children of my own, and just in trying to decorate their rooms I found that I had a hard time finding accessories.”

Kids Home Accents, located at 41 Lakeshore Drive, carries a wide range of children’s bedroom furniture, including desks, dressers, shelving units, chalk boards, and table and chair sets in addition to George’s lines of co-ordinating children’s bedroom accessories, which include a variety of quilts, pillows, sheets, shams, rugs and curtain valances. “We also have some local carpenters who build night tables, armoires, benches and stools,” George says, noting that she or her part-time employee usually paint those pieces of furniture to complement the setting they will be placed into in the store.

“We set up various bedroom scenes in the store to give the customers ideas on how they can set up their own rooms.”

“I also do my own creative lamp shades. I add on trim or ribbon to the shade to co-ordinate with the bedding accessories.”

George has always enjoyed doing crafts and found that she enjoyed making accessories for her two daughters’ rooms.

“It gives more of a creative touch than just buying it at the department store,” she says.

George started Kids Home Accents after deciding on the business idea nine months earlier, and received start-up funding through Waubetek Business Development Corpora-tion and Aboriginal Business Canada.

Her original target market was aimed towards parents of children aged from two to 12, but when a neighbouring baby accessories store advised her that they would be going out of business, she changed the focus from newborns all the way up to age 12.

“I’d always wanted to go into business,” George says. As she talked to her friends and co-workers, she realized that most of them were travelling out of town to find furniture and accessories for their children’s bedrooms. George tries to stay away from licensed product lines because they have a shorter time line.

“All the designs I have in the store will last a longer period of time,” she says. “If they want to bring in other accent pieces, it can easily be done.”