123 S. Main Street, Vicksburg, MI 49097
https://www.tanyasthegirlgarage.comhttps://www.facebook.com/tanyasgirlgarage/?fref=ts
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| Photo courtesy of Google Maps |
With a degree in accounting, DeLong worked as a financial analyst for Pfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. At Pfizer, they had an in-house art show where she entered a couple of her custom-made purses. Suddenly, colleagues wanted to purchase them from her and then others started requesting them.
A heavenly intervention came in 2006 when DeLong developed a bad case of bronchitis and a 103 degree fever. “I kept having dreams throughout the day about making custom purses for people. And then,” she interjects that someone would think the notion crazy, “I was given an entire business plan.” Even DeLong’s husband questioned how she would make it come to life.
Two days later, a friend called because there was a church craft fundraiser and someone had canceled at the last minute. She asked if DeLong would take the booth and fill it with her purses. She did. Orders came in.
“That was on a Saturday. By Wednesday, I got another call,” DeLong says. Another abandoned booth at another craft fair. DeLong went in and sold her purses. Another 25 orders came in. As she was packing up materials for the day, a woman approached and asked if DeLong would do a home party. By the time DeLong got to the parking lot, yet another woman approached with the same request.
From this, a giant side business developed. Word-of-mouth orders rolled in and requests for parties spawned as many orders as attendees. By 2007, Tanya’s Totes opened in a 10 by 10 space at the front of a local beauty salon. Then, in June 2007, DeLong’s job at Pfizer was eliminated as they laid off and transferred more than 4,000 employees.
Taking some of the funds she got from Pfizer, she took a chance and opened her own shop on Vicksburg’s historic Main Street in 2008. By this time, she’d created 1,800 purses. Customers were also requesting classes and sewing tips. DeLong, who had been sewing since the age of 5, accommodated those requests.
Then, when the painting and yarn supply shop down the street turned more to just painting, DeLong served the customers who were seeking yarn, knitting and crocheting classes. “The purses started dying off,” she said, “we’re a village of about 2,500 and I sold more than 1,800. Just about everyone had one.”
At one point in 2009, one of the male customers at Tanya’s Totes said, “This isn’t a purse shop any more, it’s a ‘girl garage,’” referring to the preferred hangout for men. The name stuck. In August 2014, DeLong bought the building at 123 Main Street. Built in 1850, the building first housed a blacksmith. From 1940 through the late 1990s, an appliance store filled the space.
Today, the front of the shop has more than 89 different yarns and supplies in stock; the old carriage house in back serves as Tanya’s classroom. She holds six classes a week that include knitting, crocheting, tatting, hand embroidery and long arm quilting. In what DeLong describes as a “Norman Rockwell kind of town,” her business is well known on the quaint Main Street where people gather and walk from barber shop and diner to hardware store and art gallery.
Generated by customer request from the start, DeLong says that still about 70 percent of her business is due to someone specifically asking for it. She likes it that way. DeLong says that like so many successful small businesses across the U.S., the focus has to be about great customer service, “People ask about something and I will do my best to find whatever it is, because I can.” And she knows handmade items are valued because “they are a lost art.” DeLong is doing her best to help people find that art again.
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