There’s a story that Kara Orr likes to tell. A few months ago, she was at a dinner party with her husband, Roni Kabessa – he’s also her business partner at Providence’s Décor Craft Inc., which the couple owns – and another guest told her that she just bought a product at the Museum of Modern Art that had changed her life.
“Oh really,” Orr recalled recently. “And what was it?”
The woman told her it was an “I Am Not a Paper Cup,” a reusable mug that’s styled to look spot-on like a paper coffee cup.
“And I said, ‘Yes, that’s one of our products, we distribute that,’ ” Orr said.
It’s a common occurrence for the employees at Décor Craft, which serves as a kind of wholesale clearinghouse for unique knickknacks and home goods. The company licenses products – designed locally and globally – that they think will be popular and sells them to retailers around the world. “In the gift industry, we sell well-designed, affordable, contemporary gift items,” Orr said. “Many of them we design here in Providence and [for] others – we have designers around the world.”
Locally, the company’s products are stocked in a few stores, including Simple Pleasures, Pleasant Surprise, Homestyle and risd|works.
In 2005, Kabessa and Orr brought the business to Providence and set their sights on two of the country’s largest retailers: Staples and CVS. And Décor Craft products soon graced the shelves in those stores. Now other regional and national chains – including Old Navy and Urban Outfitters – carry Décor Craft products.
Kabessa, who had worked in the custom-jewelry industry in New York City, founded the company in 1998 as a gift-design store. (Orr started working at the company in 2001. She had been working at the Museum of Modern Art’s store, where some of Décor Craft’s products were being sold, when she met Kabessa.) The idea to create the distribution company came from Kabessa’s international travels.
“At that time, color came into our life because Apple computers introduced their color computer. … Color came back and I was thinking about [that] and I found a couple of products in Israel that were very colorful and decided to bring them back and distribute them,” he said.
The company started with about eight products. It now has about 450 products. This year’s 136-page catalog has items ranging from dog-shaped ice cube trays, to toilet paper emblazoned with a $100 bill and computer flash drives shaped like robots. And the company is introducing products at a rate of more than 100 a year.
Because of the company’s growth – it has doubled in size since moving to Rhode Island and its business is growing by about 20 percent a year – Kabessa and Orr have now started to re-evaluate staffing and Décor Craft’s employee expectations. About three months ago, they started to create divisions within the company, putting senior employees in charge of the groups. It’s a move that Kabessa and Orr hope will increase productivity and employee retention.
“We’re working really hard to develop mid-management skills,” Kabessa said. “For example, Greg Elias is in charge of our shipping and customer service area. He has a nice job – he started in data entry and now he’s in charge of this area. … They have the accountability for their areas.”
“We want them to grow professionally,” Orr added. “We want to give them opportunities so they don’t necessarily have to go find a new job.”
Orr and Kabessa also internally divided the business into halves: the wholesaling side and the design side, Design 2 Retail. The latter “is basically a concept that we’ve developed to say there’s nothing we can’t do. Like back to school” – Kabessa pointed to the wall of his office, which was papered with designs for colorful binder clips and pens – “You give us a project and we’ll design it for you. … The customer says, ‘I want something for juniors or teens or tweens … and we can build a full program for them.”
Décor Craft, which has its office on the fifth floor of 275 Westminster, also has a showroom storefront on the street. That’s open during the holiday shopping season. It’s also where Décor Craft tries out new products, Kabessa said.
Kabessa and Orr sometimes know that a product is going to be a hit – the “I Am Not a Paper Cup,” for example, has become one of Décor Craft’s bestsellers.
“Kara knew right away,” Kabessa said.
“I just called [Kabessa] and said, ‘I found a new mug,’ ” Orr said. “I just knew, right away, it was going to be a classic. Everyone could relate to it.” •COMPANY PROFILE
Décor Craft Inc.
OWNERS: Roni Kabessa and Kara Orr
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Unique product design, manufacturing, licensing and wholesale
LOCATION: 275 Westminster St., Providence
EMPLOYEES: 18
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1998
ANNUAL SALES: WND
