Mother-Daughter Team Keeps Customers Warm and Fuzzy
Inside a century-old barn on a stretch of land near this tiny town in eastern Kansas, a computer printer spits out invoices for customers in London and Kyoto.
This is the same barn where Annie Hurlbut nearly broke her leg when she was 8 years old, having decided to launch herself from the rafters into a haystack. But it’s been at least three decades since the barn at Canaan Farm has seen any roughhousing.
These days, the building is a fulfillment center for Peruvian Connection, the mail-order catalog Annie and her mother, Biddy Hurlbut, started 20 years ago after they fell in love with sweaters Annie found while doing research in Peru for her archeology degree from Yale.
Peruvian Connection has grown dramatically from the wholesale business first run out of Biddy’s guest room. In those days, the company was held together by Annie, who ditched her dissertation to take up selling the hand-knit sweaters, and Biddy, who trotted those sweaters into department stores for store buyers to examine.
“That was when we had 50 cents in the bank and shared a tube of toothpaste,” said Biddy, 70, who is now the company’s chief financial officer. “But we grew because we have a good product.”
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Today, Peruvian Connection has a slick 48-page catalog aimed at an upscale market. The company mails out about 6 million catalogs a year in the United States and about 2 million copies internationally.
Most of its sweaters are made from alpaca wool and range in price from about $100 to more than $400. The catalog also offers Pima cotton clothing, blankets and accessories.
Annie, 45, the chief executive and president, says the prices are justified by the labor-intensive hand work.
“So, OK, maybe it is a $300 sweater that you’re buying from us, but it’s also a knit work of art,” said Annie, who contracts design work for Peruvian Connection. The company also contracts knitters in South America to craft the sweaters to the company’s specifications.
“Our sweaters last forever. We get letters from people saying things like, ‘My wife or mother died, but she left me her Peruvian Connection sweaters.’ They are heirlooms, limited edition works of art,” Annie said.
In 1996, Peruvian Connection had $17 million in net sales, contrasted with $130,000 in 1981. Orders come from Japan, Europe and across the United States. Sales in Britain account for about 20% of the business. Japanese sales have edged up lately to about 3%.
Peruvian Connection is tiny compared with some other mail-order businesses. The huge Lands’ End catalog, which specializes in casual wear and bed and bath products, mailed 211 million catalogs last year, and had $1.12 billion in sales.
But Peruvian Connection has about 125 employees distributed among offices in Lima and Kansas City and a second fulfillment center--where orders are received, put together and sent to customers--outside London. The company has three outlet stores in Overland Park; Santa Fe, N.M., and Perryville, Md. Two more are being considered in Vermont and England.
Annie, who lives with her husband, daughter and stepdaughter in Kansas City, Mo., a 45-minute drive from Canaan Farm, oversees the knitwear collection and catalog promotion from their home and manages the business via phones, e-mail and faxes. She travels to Peru about four times a year.
Annie said she never intended to be a merchant and has learned about the business as she went. But her inexperience actually helped her on at least one occasion.
She tells of receiving about 4,000 requests for catalogs after the New York Times printed an article about Peruvian Connection in the early 1980s.
“I sat down and wrote about 4,000 thank-you notes to all the people who ordered a catalog because of that article,” Annie said. “I know now what a good marketing technique that was. But then I had no idea.
“I just wrote those notes because that was the way I was raised; if someone wrote you a letter, then you responded.”
Many of those people are still customers, she said.
