Grandma Whimsy

Anne McGilvray is the woman responsible for discovering much of the
off-the-wall stuff we like
so much

By MICHAEL PRECKER
Staff Writer
Dallas Morning News
December 28, 2003

Take a walk through Froggie's 5 & 10 - past the amazing Pez collection, the Mr. Peabody bobblehead, the combination pencil and bubble blower and all the rest - and the philosophy quickly becomes clear.

"We don't sell anything that anyone would ever need," proclaims owner Anne McGilvray. 'I like things that bring a smile to your face, something to make you feel warm and fuzzy."

That credo has made the offbeat toy emporium a Knox Street institution since it opened seven years ago. What shoppers don't realize is that the colorful, compact store is the tip of a retailing iceberg and that its owner is one of the most influential people in the novelty gift business.

Anne McGilvray & Company, which has its headquarters in a warehouse district near downtown Dallas, is one of the largest firms of its kind in the country.

At the Dallas wholesale showroom, merchants check out products from dozens of companies that Ms. McGilvray represents. Meanwhile, about 100 sales reps, fan out over 21 states, supplying thousands of stores with about everything you ever wanted for no good reason.

Books and toys and candy and knick­knacks. Funny stuff (bacon-scented car fresheners, a purse made from a coconut). Nostalgic stuff (disco balls, I Love Lucy memorabilia). Edgy stuff (The World's Worst Drinking Games, Slut lip balm). Too-cute stuff (baby towels with a froggie head. greeting cards shaped like teapots).

On and on it goes, to the tune of $90 million in wholesale this year-and much more after the retail markup. The ringmaster of it all is an energetic grandmother with a golden instinct and an inexhaustible sense of fun.

"Anne is like a little kid; says Mitch Nash, co-owner of Blue Q, a Massachusetts company whose novelty line ranges front Mother Teresa Breath Mist to Sparkling Mullet Body and Car Wash. "She's been a legend in the industry for many years, but she still maintains this childlike enthusiasm for the stuff she's selling."

The legend starts in St. Louis, where Anne's father was superintendent of a small school district. She grow up loving horses, which drew her to Abilene 's Hardin-Simmons University, one of the few schools with an intercollegiate women's rodeo team.

She ended up a schoolteacher in Missouri, married to Michael, another school­teacher who embarked on a corporate career that kept them on the move.

He was the executive, but she was the saleswoman.

"Anne was always very entrepreneurial," Michael says. "Once when we were moving, she sold our bedroom set so fast that I had to get out of bed because the guy was coming to pick it up."

While raising three children, she worked as a salesclerk and sold Mary Kay cosmetics, among other things. "I was just too bored to stay home and be a house­wife," she says.

In the mid-'70s, Ms. McGilvray walked into a card store in Minneapolis asking for a clerk job.

"She said, 'Would you like to be a rep?"'

Ms. McGilvray says, "I had no idea what that was."

It meant taking the cards around to local shops, persuading the owners to stock them and pocketing a percentage of the sale.

"You have to love selling," she says. "You don't like rejection but have to be resilient. And you have to be self-motivated."

She was all that. First, she asked if she could cross the river to pitch stores in St. Paul. Then she accompanied Michael on business trips to Dallas and pitched stores here. Then she started making deals with other manufacturers to offer more products on the same sales call. Then a small showroom became available at a Minneapolis gift mart, where the store owners began to come to her.

"It was never a grand plan," Anne says. "It was step by step."

When Mr. McGilvray moved to Dallas to join the Zale Corp. she opened a showroom here that became the base for the growing company. After a few years of working a corporate job all day and answering his wife's business questions all night, he decided he couldn't do both.

So in 1982 he signed on full time. "They couldn't believe it;" he says of his former bosses "They said, 'you're leaving us to go sell glow-in-the-dark cockroaches?'"

An eye for novelty

That was pretty much it. The division of labor was clear front the beginning. Michael ran the business side, Anne found the merchandise. He handles the computers, she writes down ideas and checks off items on long to-do lists.

"All the reps carry laptops," she says. "I'm the last holdout."

And no computer program can take her place.

"She has an amazing eye for interesting products and companies;" says Mark Pahlow , who owns Accoutrements, the parent company of Seattle's famous Archie McPhee novelty store. "She's picked a lot of companies out of the blue and helped make them big successes."

Novelty shoelaces were one of their first big hits. She credits her Midwestern roots with helping her spot the cow motif trend early, then jump-starting it by encouraging clients to make more products with big black blotches on a white background.

Mr. McGilvray and others give her credit for bringing specialty books into gift stores, as well as unusual candy items. You might not spend more than a quarter on a pack of Wrigley's gum, for example; but if the package proclaims "SHUT UP!" or "WANNA KISS?" you'll pay a lot more.

Her dedication to frivolity has two sources. "I prefer to surround myself with colorful, fun objects," she says. "But early on it seemed like anytime we tried something serious, it just didn't work for us."

And how did she fine-tune that sense of what will sell?

"I have absolutely no idea," she says. "I couldn't design a product to save my life. But I could go into a room and see a product and tell you if it would make it or not."

Sales potential isn't the only criterion. She won't descend into vulgarity and doesn't even like the term "gag gifts"-but admits it's a subject judgment.

"I do like Whoopee cushions," she says." That's good humor. We sell lots of whoopee cushions."

One of Anne' s big misses was Beanie Babies, but she's not that sorry. The company that made them was notoriously difficult to deal with, and stores that focused on them too much suffered when the craze crashed.

Plus, she'd rather play with toys than look at a collectible on a shelf.

"She always wants you to get a demo and try it out," sass Charlie Gentry, who runs both the Dallas showroom and Froggie's, as lie demonstrates the Airzooka, which shoots a harmless blast of air about 20 feet. "We've played with almost everything here."

The stubborn side

But this business isn't all whimsy. Michael introduced computers into the operation before any competitors. They use psychological evaluations to hire sales reps, treat successful associates like family and don't let unsuccessful ones linger long. Anne is tenacious in pursuing the rights to products she wants to sell but doesn't have time to coddle people who approach her with bad ideas.

"Everybody says, 'This is the next pet rock,'" she say's. "But we're only going to say yes to maybe one thing out of 100. I'm not always right, but I usually am."

That attitude, she acknowledges, doesn't always, make her the easiest person to work with.

"She's a very smart woman, but she's very stubborn," says Ulla Kyling, an aide in the Dallas office for 20 years and a close friend. "At the same tine she's so nice. She never raises her voice. But this is her life, and you have to do it her way."

That goes for family, too. When the McGilvray's oldest child, Laurie, finished college, she came home expecting a job.

"I said, 'I want to rep,' and they said, 'Good for you. Good luck,'" Laurie says with a laugh. :They said, 'If we hire you, all the other reps will think we hired you be cause you're our daughter.'"

So she got a job elsewhere, earned her stripes and joined her parents a couple of years later-covering Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee, hardly the cushiest job.

Now Laurie's a senior account rep in Minneapolis and helps land new business. Her sister, Liesl, works out of San Francisco, while brother Todd raises horses in Ennis and helps on special projects.

"You're the luckiest person in the world if your whole clan works with you." Anne McGilvray says. "I get to see them so much."

World travels

The McGilvrays, left Dallas for New Braunfels a few years back, then moved to Santa Fe in 2001. "I've liked every place I've lived, but I get itchy feet," she says. " Every time I go on vacation we end up at the real estate office."

Nowadays, the address doesn't really matter. The McGilvrays travel to trade shows, visit their other showrooms in Chicago and Los Angeles and spend a month in Florida each year.

"I can set up an office in 24 hours," she says. "With faxes and phones, you can be anywhere. I don't know if it works for everybody, but I know it's right for us. "

Michael usually comes to Dallas every month, Anne less often. She makes a point to visit S&D Oyster Company on McKinney-"It never changes," she says. "I love that"-and hangs out at Froggie's.

"I wouldn't even know how to work the cash register, but I love it when people walk in and say this is my favorite store," she says.

Although the McGilvrays had dabbled in retail before, Froggie's wasn't in the plan. 'We liked the neighborhood, and we were driving down the street one day and saw a For Lease sign," she says. Michael says Froggie's is a valuable opportunity to gauge customer reaction to products that sales reps are pitching around the country. But mostly, it's just fun.

"Next to their grandchildren, Froggie's is the light of her life," he says. "It gives her the opportunity to play store."

This is nothing new. Back in kindergarten, Anne's classroom had two play-houses.

"There was one where you could go cook and play with a baby doll," she says. "And there was a store with fruits and vegetables and a cash register and money."

Never mind where all the other girls went. "I just found the store way more interesting," she says.

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