Buttoning Up the Market : Firm Started on a Whim Grosses $2 Million in 1992
Sometimes businesses begin almost by accident.
So it was with Killer Buttonz, a small company making button covers that snap over existing standard-size buttons.
Killer Buttonz’s owners, Donna and David Newman, got the idea at an art gallery gift shop, where they saw metal snaps in a variety of designs that fit tightly over buttons and can change the look of a blouse or shirt. Plastic black-and-white, cow-shaped covers or silver cowboy-hat covers, for example, can change an ordinary white shirt into a Western-style fashion.
The Newmans already owned a T-shirt silk-screen ing business that they had operated since 1979 from a small office in Rancho Santa Margarita. And Donna Newman was looking for a new challenge. As for David Newman, he wanted to spend less time working on T-shirts and more as an artist creating contemporary oil paintings.
So, in the spring of 1990, Donna started experimenting with button covers. Her first success was finding a supplier for the metal snaps. That done, she and David began making button covers in earnest, with Donna handling all the day-to-day aspects of the business.
“We still had the silk-screening business to run, but as time went on Killer Buttonz was taking more of her time,” David said of Donna. “The other business was just kind of leveling off. It was really weird how things kind of flip-flopped.”
When the couple started the new enterprise, Donna said, they didn’t realize its potential. “We started hiring neighbors, friends” and Donna’s sister, Wanda Oldham, was already working at the T-shirt business. She movedover to Killer Buttonz and took charge of inventory.
Today, Killer Buttonz makes more than 300 styles of button covers, as well as coordinating pins, earrings, bolos and bracelets. (Or, as the Newmans spell them: button coverz, earz, topperz, pin palz, pin upz, boloz.) For 1992 the company recorded sales of $2 million nationwide and employed 17 people.
The actual marketing of the covers is now done by eight sales representatives across the nation, leaving the Newmans, who have sold the T-shirt operation, free to concentrate on their new enterprise. Donna handles the business side of the operation, and David creates designs and buys raw materials, including rhinestones, plastics, old coins and paper flowers.
Most of the company’s competition is on the East Coast, where two larger companies manufacture button covers. The Newmans, however, say their designs are more artistic and are distinctive because they are handcrafted. In fact, for a new line this spring they have hired a Laguna Beach artist to design ceramic one-of-a-kind covers that will be signed.
Their best-selling designs, the Newmans say, are the Western-themed button covers. Next is Victoriana: flowers and old-fashioned jewels. Also popular are ethnic-looking designs made from such natural materials as linen, bone, leather, wood and coconut.
Most packages of Killer Buttonz feature five separate designs in a variety of materials. “There’s hardly ever a package where everything on it comes from one place,” David said. “We use many different sources, and there may be 16 different pieces on a single set of buttons.”
Killer Buttonz range in price from $10 to $36, with one-of-a-kind art pieces bringing the highest price.
One of the first places that the Newmans placed their Killer Buttonz was in a kiosk at Newport Beach’s Fashion Island shopping center.
Killer Buttonz are also available at Bullock’s and Broadway department stores.
The Newmans, meanwhile, are keeping their eyes on not only the changing fashion scene but also the advantages of diversifying. They are working, for example, on a line of lower-priced button covers to be sold in discount stores and under a different brand name. They are also working on a line of belts featuring custom-designed silver buckles.
“This button business just kind of happened,” said David, who now has his own art studio. “I certainly had never thought about doing something related to costume jewelry.”
