RULING THE ROOST : Business Started on a Wing and a Prayer Now Feathers His Nest
Owners of pet birds no longer need to feel guilty about keeping their feathered friends in cramped quarters. All it takes is $4,000 or so to give the creatures room to spread their wings and a leisurely life of luxury.
Thanks to Jim Durant, some birds have been flying their old crowded coops into roomier, better-appointed cages--up to 40 feet tall--made of solid brass and copper, some trimmed with marble and beveled glass.
His Santa Ana-based firm, James Durant Aviaries, is a leading maker of world-class bird cages. Among the avian cognoscenti , Durant is to bird cages what Godiva is to chocolates.
The cages are sold to such customers as the Hilton Hawaiian Village, the Hyatt Regency Macau in Hong Kong and just plain folks. Well, maybe not so plain--Durant could be called cage-maker to the stars. His customer list includes a rock star or two, an oil mogul in Kuwait, and actors Chevy Chase and Patrick Duffy.
Working out of a cramped shop piled high with half-built bird cages, feeders and brass pedestals, Durant controls the business from concept to delivery. With the help of two assistants--sometimes more, depending on his backlog--Durant takes from 30 hours to several months to produce any of his 13 standard models or to custom-design something even more spectacular.
Although he has made cages as small as 10 by 12 inches, Durant is best known for his large creations, such as the cage he designed for the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. The 40-foot-tall cage measures 17 feet in diameter and will cost in the low six figures.
But when it comes to deluxe cages, size is not the only reason that Durant rules the roost. Creature comforts include solid brass ladders or swings, hand-formed feed cups and cast legs on the brass and copper bases.
Even with price tags that match what some people pay for a car, Durant’s customers keep flocking to his establishment. He estimated that he sells 100 to 150 cages a year for an average price of $3,200 apiece.
A diminutive eccentric who wears a queue, Durant is nonchalant about why his business has taken off. “A lot of times, people just want something special,” he said. “Some people hunger for quality in everyday products.”
Customers with that appetite are like Gloria Allen, a San Francisco-area bird breeder, who has five Durant cages. Her assortment includes a model that’s Durant’s piece de resistance-- an eight-foot-tall, seven-foot-wide custom cage with a beveled glass top and drawers of jade marble that match the marble in Allen’s fireplace.
After plunking down roughly $14,000 for the cage, Allen said Durant’s prices are “absolutely awful. But if you’re a person who cares to attire your home with only the best, what you want is a Jim Durant cage. He has no imitators--there is no finer-quality cage.”
Twenty years ago, when Durant started building cages, he had no idea that anyone but him gave a hoot about what their pet cages looked like. A civil engineer, Durant indirectly got into the cage business in 1970 when a friend gave him a parrot. When he could not find a cage he liked, he began building one himself.
Durant spent about a year welding together brass and copper before he finished the six-foot-tall cage. “I wanted it to be perfect,” he recalled.
He showed his creation to the local pet store, which asked him to make two for them to use in the shop. Within two weeks, the cages flew out the door--one for $250 and a considerably larger one for $500.
Still, Durant’s business advisers told him the idea of a bird cage business was, well, for the birds. What they had not figured was that some veterinarians and avian authorities estimate that there may be up to 200 million pet birds nationally--nearly double the combined number of cats and dogs.
By 1974, Durant had started his business on a wing and a prayer. But within a few years, the business really took off, after a friend persuaded Durant to run an ad in Architectural Digest.
The exposure gave Durant instant access to high-income shoppers and interior designers, who thought his product was just the thing to show off such rare birds as macaws and cockateels.
The uniqueness of Durant’s merchandise is the sort of thing that can make you want to buy a bird. In fact, that’s exactly what Patrick Duffy, the “Dallas” star did. A while back, when Duffy ordered his cage from a catalogue, he did not realize that the cage--intended for his small bird--was actually designed to fit a giant parrot.
“He ended up leaving his little bird in the same cage,” Durant said, “and went out and bought a parrot to go in mine.”
