Today I am thrilled to introduce you all to Michelle of The Lemon Bay Doll Company. Michelle agreed to share her story with all of us about how her life long love of dolls turned in to a wonderful family business.
"I guess our story must be similar to that
of many of the doll related cottage-industry businesses on Etsy. Quite simply, we are a family who love
dolls. We are also a family of hobbyist
woodworkers, boat enthusiasts, amateur boat builders, and retired
restauranteurs.
If I were to point to where it all started, I
would have to say it was Christmas of my 8th year. I am as old as AG’s Julie, if you care to do
the math. The week before Christmas, my
mother asked me if I had finished my letter to Santa. In my most mature, eight-year-old voice, I
informed her that I was getting a bit old to believe in Santa. But, hedging my
bets I added, if he was real, I hoped
he could bring me a doll that looked like Laura Ingalls. Somehow mom managed to sew a beautiful cloth
doll dressed in a prairie outfit. Christmas
morning came and under the tree was a package from Santa. Inside I found my beloved Rose, an 18” cloth
doll with shoe-button eyes and a pretty pink embroidered mouth, a purple and
orange (it is 1974 remember) flowered dress with puffed sleeves, petticoat
apron, bloomers, black shoes and a sunbonnet!
I was convinced. No one but Santa
could have made such a beautiful doll and I decided not to retire the jolly old
Saint for at least a year or two more. I
also vowed I was going to play with Rose forever
Years
passed, and so did my resolve. I guess I
was off to college when Rose was finally packed away. While she traveled through life with me, she
didn’t see daylight for over 15 years.
I
was pregnant with my first child, a girl, when I remembered Rose. She came out of the box and took her place in
the nursery as a decoration more than a toy.
On my daughter’s first birthday, I decided to see if she would be
interested in Rose. Within the first 30
seconds, one of Rose’s button eyes was bit off and her cloth face torn by the
razor sharp baby tooth responsible for the blinding. Rose got her first facelift and was promptly
put back on the shelf. We had plastic
baby dolls for a few years.
When
our oldest was four and our second was two, I learned about American Girl. That was it.
Whether the girls were ready or not, I was. That Christmas our first two American Girl
dolls arrived under the tree. Our oldest
is now 14 and still loves doll play as much as her 12 year-old and 8 year-old
sisters. Our collection includes 20
dolls, mostly AG though we now have two MyTwinn 23” dolls who play ‘mother’ to
the 18” girls. We prefer the
historicals. I guess you’d call us old
fashioned. We favor their feminine, modest clothes. Ever since Felicity and Elizabeth entered our
home, and our hearts, our family has been designing and producing toys for
imaginative play: doll houses, beds, school desks, tables, armoires – anything
our girls could imagine.
Family
and friends had been prodding us for years to try and sell our 18-inch doll
accessories to the public at large. We
have entrepreneurial blood in our veins and after selling the last of our 35
Italian restaurants, we thought retirement would provide us the time and energy
to give it a go. We never intended the
business to be more than a way to fund our doll collecting budget.
The
final nudge came one afternoon as we watched the girls pushing their dolls in a
laundry basket with a yardstick for a mast and a handkerchief for a sail. They
had just read the AG Caroline books and as happens so often around our home,
they were acting out the adventures with their own dolls.
Christmas, 2012, was fast approaching and they
were still playing with the laundry basket schooner. “We should build a boat
for the dolls,” we mused, “How hard could it be? We have built several small sailboats and
we’ve scaled down many designs for the 18-inch dolls already,” we reasoned,
“Why not?” That year, with squeals of
delight, the girls found the prototype for our doll skiff under the tree. Four months later, Lemon Bay Schooners
with
one listing months later, Lemon Bay Schooners:
“Handcrafted Wood Schooner for 18” Dolls.”
Though the skiff will always be one of my
favorite items to build, our product line has grown to include over 30 items. In the process, it has outgrown our original
name, Lemon Bay Schooners. In April of
2015, we officially changed our DBA to Lemon Bay Doll Company.
We
felt it was time to have our name and logo better represent what we do here. When we
opened our Etsy shop, we were located in Englewood, Florida, the location of
Lemon Bay, and kept our boats in a Lemon Bay marina. We have since moved north
on the Gulf. We operate out of our home,
a ten-acre farm in the countryside just south of Brooksville, Florida. Our woodshop, no longer in our garage, is now
in a converted 1,200 sq. ft. horse barn.
I do the sewing in my closet, a walk-in that is about the same size as
my first apartment. We gave up parking
our cars in the garage when we moved to Brooksville, and now under air, our
garage is the home of our shipping department and “Dollville”. “Dollville” is an ever-evolving test ground
for all our prototypes and the fertile ground of our children’s doll play –
where most of the ideas that develop into our products are born.
At Lemon Bay Dolls, we appreciate the quality
of artisan craftsmanship and have always been drawn to the more “natural” look
of handcrafted wood toys. Because our
children and now yours, will be handling our toys, we are committed to keeping
them as non-toxic as possible. We polish
our toys with a homemade beeswax finish to bring out the natural colors and
grains of the wood or offer them unfinished for the customer to paint. When we create toys for our children's imaginative
play, we seek to impart our love of creativity and adventure. We look to provide a vehicle with which we
can teach them skills that they will someday apply in life. We hope our toys can offer this same
possibility to our customers and their families.
Thank you Michelle for sharing your story with us. To visit The Lemon Bay Doll Company Etsy Shop please click here.
Now it is your turn, share your story with our readers by sending me an email to karenmowen@gmail.com
As with all our posts we would love to hear from you so please leave us a comment here or email me at karenmowen@gmail.com
*From Julie's doll mom:*
ReplyDeleteLast year, I bought the archery set from Lemon Bay for my doll camp. And the camp chairs in her shop started b/c of a custom idea from me! I ordered 2 green camp chairs for my dolls last year. I'm glad she's selling them in her shop now! Hi Michelle!