Selling queen-size bedroom linen sets with an average cost of about $500, and as high as $800, requires a certain amount of tact.
But Wendy Brown, owner of Wendy Brown Fine Linens on Providence’s East Side, is passionate about the things she sells. She sleeps on quality linens, she said, and they’re a luxury that everyone should have.
“I compare them to a woman’s cocktail dress,” she said, offering one of her sales pitches, “because she doesn’t think anything about paying that amount for a dress that she might wear twice a year. And you sleep in your sheets every night.”
In Brown’s store, it’s all about the customer’s “feel-test.” Thread-count per square inch isn’t as important as big retailers say it is, she said.
“I always say the thread-count number is an American marketing scheme,” she joked, “to get you to buy something that’s got a higher count. But I really feel a blind feel-test is how you should buy your sheets.”
Many of the sheets at Wendy Brown are 200-thread-count, “but if you just felt it, you wouldn’t be able to tell,” Brown said. Though she does “play the game,” offering sheets with up to 1,000 thread-counts.
With the dollar dropping in international exchange rates and the increasingly import-based retail market in the United States, many of the products sold at Wendy Brown come from outside the country.
“Really, very few things come from the United States, because we can’t afford to buy our own products anymore,” she said. “But we can afford to sell our cotton to the world. They weave it into some of the sheets that come back here.”
Brown began selling linens out of her Rumford home in 1990. By 2000, the business had grown enough that she could justify taking out a space for it.
For two years, she sold out of a storefront on Elmgrove Avenue, which runs parallel to Wayland Avenue, before moving to her current Wayland Square location.
Now, she’s president of the Wayland Square Merchant’s Association, a volunteer organization that’s pushing for cross-promotion among the small businesses in the square.
“We try to be somewhat structured in our approach, having two or three events a year to draw business to the square,” she said. “It’s just to try to make people who shop in Providence not go to the big-box stores, but support the independent retailers.”
Brown knows how difficult it can be to operate a small business. During the 10 years that Brown ran her business out of her house, her living room doubled as a showroom.
“And in those 10 years, I had four children,” she said. “I just needed to separate, just get out of the house and not have any more chocolate all over my samples and not find lost bottles in my bags of things.”
And her “cozy” store, 1,000 square feet with four employees, lends itself to personal sales, she said. Inside, the store’s look changes seasonally, dictated mostly by tablecloth styles, which vary the most.
Many of her sales don’t take place in the store, but through customers that she picked up at trunk shows around the country during her early years.
“And because I’ve been in business so long, much of it is from word-of-mouth,” she said. She has a strong base in Providence and many of her customers live in Newport.
For many customers, she retains records of orders – color, size and style – so she can help them find what they need in the future. That, she said, is a type of retail that’s fading fast.
“My focus, when I opened my store, was to sell bed, bath and table linens and be a one-stop shop for, basically, linens you would need for your home in a way that, really, has gone away,” Brown said.
Now, she said, there is a movement in America toward a return to selective, quality buying. And the bridal registry services that Brown offers are aligned with that, she said.
“I think, slowly but surely, my customers are going to start knowing, without the help of their parents, that they might like to have some wedding gifts of nice sheets or tablecloths,” Brown said. “If you buy a really nice set of sheets, they’ll last you a very long time.”
Brown describes her store as offering a trousseau-like product.
“Early in the 1900s, mothers of the bride would buy a trousseau – blanket covers, sheets and tablecloths, towels – all monogrammed and embellished for the bride,” Brown said. “It was a tradition, my mother did that for me and I just thought it was really neat.” •
company profile
Wendy Brown Ltd.
OWNER: Wendy Brown
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Bed, bath and
table linen specialty store that offers
bridal registry
LOCATION: 183 Wayland Ave., Providence
EMPLOYEES: 4
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1990
ANNUAL SALES: WND
