From Grassroots Plan to 130 Stores

Little did Kim Madden know that, at age 6, her daughter Heather would set her on a course for a new career. Suddenly feeling too grown up for the traditional hair bows her mom used to hold back her long locks, Heather helped Kim fashion an alternative accessory made of pink ribbon and white feathers, which Heather happily wore, declaring it was "sassy."

It wasn't long before the girls in Heather's dance class started requesting their own handmade ponytail holders. Girls even stopped Heather and Kim on the street while they were on vacation to ask where Heather bought her unusual hair piece. Not wanting to disappoint her friends, Heather and Kim began filling orders in a variety of colors at their kitchen table, and mom and daughter found themselves with a budding business on their hands, which they dubbed "Sassy Tails."

At the same time, Kim Madden was in charge of sales and marketing for a national training and consulting firm and had recently partnered with Steve Spence, owner of distributorship Proforma Rhino Graphics, Greenville, S.C. Spence provided her with trade-show materials, commercial printing and an online store where her clients could purchase training materials. Madden had investigated a number of other resources before she brought Proforma on board and had found the alternatives to be piecemeal. "I never could get someone to take a look at this comprehensive picture that I had of what we could do with our training, and Steve understood that immediately," she says. She appreciated both his holistic approach to her business needs and his ability to deliver what he promised.

Madden and Spence had worked together for only nine months, but she didn't hesitate to contact him after deciding to launch Sassy Tails as a full-fledged business in late 2003. "I originally went to him for some basic printed products such as hang tags, but the more we talked, the more I realized what a resource he was," Madden says. "So I ended up using him and his connections through Proforma Rhino as my link to branding, manufacturing and, of course, all my printing needs as well. We had a lot of very good synergy."

Spence agreed to aid Madden in this new endeavor. With the popularity of Sassy Tails, it wasn't long before Madden turned to him for a full range of printing and marketing services.

Together with his team, Spence, who has a background in buying print packaging, developed a plan to help Madden do everything from packaging her product to merchandising it through retailers and online at www.sassytails.com. The team also developed a planogram so she could demonstrate at trade shows how the product could be displayed in a 2-foot area versus a 4-foot area, for example, or on a counter versus a freestanding floor unit. Says Spence: "We had to do a little homework to get there-it's not your typical print solutions account. We want to be a total solutions provider, as long as we can print while we do it."

Working from the marketing plan Proforma developed, Spence and Madden have teamed up to grow Sassy Tails from a grassroots pet project to a brand that's represented in 130 stores in 17 states. "Without the Proforma team, we probably would not have launched, or at least not as successfully as we did," Madden says. The company's annual revenue is still less than $100,000 per year, a modest but very promising number for a business that's just two years old.

Madden plans to continue selling Sassy Tails in small, specialty stores, and she's pursuing niche markets like NASCAR. "If Sassy Tails is building a national brand or whether it's sold and I've moved on to other opportunities, my association with Steve and his team would remain strong," Madden says. "When you find a trusted business relationship, it's important to cultivate it, regardless of the opportunity being pursued at the moment. You never know what new business venture might be around the corner."

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