Tanya’s…The Girl Garage - Vicksburg, MI

123 S. Main Street, Vicksburg, MI 49097

https://www.tanyasthegirlgarage.com
https://www.facebook.com/tanyasgirlgarage/?fref=ts

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

Ask owner Tanya H. DeLong how her business came to be and she’ll tell you, “It was a God thing, seriously.”

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.

South Shore Arts - Crown Point, IN

123 N. Main Street, Crown Point, IN 46307

http://www.southshoreartsonline.org

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

Approximately 45 miles southeast of Chicago and the Lake Michigan shoreline is Crown Point, Indiana. Located a half block from the historic county courthouse where silent film star Rudolph Valentino married Winifred DeWolfe and three blocks from the county jail where John Dillinger famously made his escape is a branch of the South Shore Arts at 123 N. Main Street.

This not-for-profit organization was formed in 1936 as the Hammond District Art Association by 10 artists who had “the avowed purpose to stimulate interest and appreciation of art in our region." What began as a showing of works in the hat department of Minas Department Store in Hammond, Indiana (30 miles to the northeast of Crown Point) turned into an annual Salon Show of painters and sculptors; today $10,000 in prize money is awarded to local artists. It is one of the largest juried shows in the Midwest.

The mission of South Shore Arts is to “transform the South Shore through the arts,” notes Tricia Hernandez, Director of Marketing and Development. The organization makes the arts accessible to the community by providing exhibitions for local artists, youth outreach programs and classes for all ages. Throughout the year, South Shore Arts provides more than 400 classes in visual arts media, including ceramics, photography, painting, drawing and cartooning. And, in a time when the art programs are the first thing to be cut at many schools, they partner with schools and serve approximately 28,000 children each year.

Public exhibitions have included Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell and Ansel Adams.  In addition to the annual Salon Show, South Shore Arts provides other opportunities for artists to show their work and awards more than $200,000 in grants with funds provided by the Indiana Arts Commission to nonprofit arts providers in Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties in Indiana.

With their main location in Munster, Indiana (approximately 24 miles northwest) South Shore Arts established a branch in Crown Point in 1998, but moved into this gut-rehabbed space on Main Street in 2011. Hernandez says it’s a great space with large glass windows where people walking by can see the activity of classes in session or exhibits being hung. “[The windows] cause an interest in the arts, which is our goal.”

In the more than 70 years they have been in the area, many artists “have been able to make art their livelihood and succeed,” says Hernandez. She is also quick to point out the impact of classes on many area children. According to the website, some classes are available from birth. Hernandez says some people bring infants as young as a couple weeks old into the "Music Together" class. "Mommy & Me" classes encourage toddler participation. Other classes are enriched with an educational component where children learn about diversity, littering or drug prevention through art. Adult and senior classes teach drawing, watercolor painting, sewing, pottery, photography and more.

South Shore Arts is also the largest national retailer of South Shore Posters. Between 1925 and 1929, the Indiana commuter train known as The South Shore Line, became very successful. Passengers could ride from Chicago all the way to South Bend, Indiana. In an effort to boost ridership, the train began an advertising campaign highlighting area stops of interest such as the Indiana Dunes and Notre Dame Football. The poster art became well-known and won medals in several Art Directors Club annual competitions. Print magazine compares them to the graphic posters of the London Underground and notes that “there are eight examples [of the South Shore posters] in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.”