The following individuals volunteer their time to help shape the future of RetailSpeaks by sharing wisdom, experience, and insight. They represent all points in the spectrum: north and south...new stores and established stores...gifts, stationery, and home accessories...brick and mortar only, plus those who add a website.... Just like real life.

Tanja’s journey to retail was an eventful one. While researching a future investment in a bread company franchise, she learned she was pregnant. Ten weeks before her daughter was born, the medical company she worked for was bought out. And upon the baby’s arrival, Tanja found no one in sight sold creative birth announcements. Six months later, she opened RSVP.

This is no run of the mill stationery and gift store. Rather than watch Snapfish and Shutterfly gut her photo card business, Tanja created a successful alternative that reclaimed the lost revenue. Before the launch of O Magazine, she made it her mission to provide as many of Oprah’s Favorite Things featured on the annual gift episode as possible—an approach that allowed her to take advantage of the über-celebrity’s marketing machine. Thinking out of the box is a standard concept for this Michigan retailer.

It’s not numbers or sales that matter most, though. “I think one of the things I am proudest of is that two years ago, RSVP had a team that participated in the Susan G. Komen 3-day breast cancer walk,” shares Tanja. “‘RSVP to Life’ walked 240 miles and raised $7,600.”

If ever there’s been a perfect fit between a store and its name, this is it. “The best complement I get is when I hear people giggle as they peruse the store. It tells me that glee gifts is living up to its name,” explains Ann. “I love seeing the ‘glee’ in their eyes and joy in their voice as they tell me thier stories.”

Biking the three miles to work, where she’s only blocks from her childrens’ school, gives Ann the opportunity to stay connected to the community—something near and dear to her heart as President of the Downtown Business Association. “I love having a storefront; I can dress my windows, greet customers as they walk in the door, and wave to people in their cars as they ride by. My store is like a community center!”

The past five years have brought a few accolades along the way, including multiple nods for Regional Best Gift Store, First Choice for Gift Shop, and First Choice for Jewelry Store, and Honorable Mention for Home Decorating Store in the Reader’s Choice Awards Community Newspapers.

As is the case with any retailer, even the most accomplished can have her comic moments. “I once gift-wrapped a slipper, not a pair of slippers,” recalls Ann. “I forget the right foot.”

Des was originally elected into the position of retail store owner. As she tells it, “We had a family conference with the children and we voted 4 to 1 to go for it” after her husband first suggested the idea. Apparently, her five year old daughter held out, who “thought she was not going to recieve meals any longer, and started whining, asking who was going to feed her.”

That wasn’t the last time Des would be subject to an election. “In 2008 we were voted one of the top gift stores in Tulsa by Tulsa People Magazine readers,” she adds. Designated a Brighton Heart Store, The Perfect Touch continues to excel as a favorite destination for customers.

Of course, life in a store still holds its surprises. This past Christmas, one of those customers approached the staff with a handbag she’d found on the shelf...with $250 inside. As firm believers in “Do unto others,” Des rewarded the honest customer with a $25 thank you, then joined her staff in trying to locate the customer who’d returned the bag earlier, still unaware she’d left money inside. No doubt that was a merry Christmas indeed.

Cinda made the jump from special event planner to Professional Stationer by accident. “Actually, I was dead set against going into retail,” she recalls, “until spending a couple of hours with a fellow stationer whose own store had operated successfully for sixteen years. By the end of that two hours, I was thinking up store names.” Five months later, Cinda opened Details, Ink. in the heart of the Minneapolis lakes district. Fourteen years later, thanks to her landlords defaulting on the lease, she made the official jump from retailer to full time consultant, at the urging of industry leaders and fellow retailers.

Today, Cinda spends most of her time traveling the country to support independent, locally owned, brick and mortar businesses in various ways, most visibly through The 3/50 Project, which she founded in March 2009. Singled out by Inc. Magazine for her expertise in using social media to engage audiences offline, her influence spans both realms, always with the purpose of teaching entrepreneurs how to strengthen their role in the marketplace.

Looking back at what was most important when running her own store, Cinda sites two things: faith and humor. “Retail is one heck of a risky profession; you have to trust that God didn’t place you on this career precipice for nothing. As for humor, well.... In the first three hours of business the day we opened, our first customer pointed out a massive typo on our freshly installed store signage, we had our first shoplifter, and the cash register drawer wouldn’t open without a service call by the manufacturer who was an hour and a half away. I had a choice: either pray, then laugh, or throw in the towel and sob. Glad I went with option A, because the next fourteen years were worth every moment.”