Helene Dumoulin Montgomery is sticking her neck out for giraffes.
This year her San Juan Capistrano-based Calisson Inc. plans to sell 500,000 Sophie Giraffes, which are French-made, seven-inch tall plastic figurines that go for $25 each and are marketed for babies.
The giraffes, sold to kids in France since the 1960s, found some fame here after being photographed with the children of celebrities Nicole Ritchie and Kate Hudson.
Last year Montgomery said she sold 100,000 of them as the sole U.S. distributor for France’s Vulli Sa, a maker of games, toys and other products for children.
“The orders have been increasing every month this year,” she said. “I turned this little toy into the thing to have for kids.”
France-born Montgomery started the business in 2000 from her Laguna Niguel garage after she couldn’t find a place to buy one of the giraffes for her daughter. She was a bank teller and assistant to a real estate agent before starting the business.
It was slow going at first. After being rejected by major retailers, she began to find some favor with small boutiques.
Eventually she started connecting with moms who wrote blogs who began to endorse the giraffes as a safe toy for children.
“That’s what really worked for me,” she said. “I never thought it would grow this big.”
Today Sophie is mostly purchased by gift buyers from retailers such as Seattle-based Nordstrom Inc., Davenport, Iowa-based Von Maur Inc., Montclair, N.J.-based 1800diapers Inc., and San Francisco’s The Gap Inc.
It was also a top seller with Seattle’s Amazon.com Inc. for a few months, she said.
Calisson recently moved its seven employees into a 2,500-square-foot office and is looking for more space to expand.
It also sells blankets and key chains and is working on bringing another undisclosed product to market.
Surf-Inspired Shoes
Aliso Viejo-based shoemaker OluKai Inc. doesn’t give up much about its business strategy or sales.
The three-year-old company was founded by two veterans of Nike Inc. and another from Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc.
OluKai makes sandals and loafers for men and women that retail for about $100 a pop.
The shoe maker sells to Nordstrom, Nevada’s Zappos.com Inc., Washington’s Recreational Equipment Inc. and San Diego’s HansenSurf.
“We want to set the standard in the industry,” said Marketing Director Kerry Konrady. “It’s not about being the biggest and baddest.”
OluKai is quick to boast its family-oriented work environment modeled after the Hawaiian culture.
Wednesday morning surf sessions with co-workers are part of the routine, Konrady said.
No one at the company holds the title of chief executive. Instead, its three founders share leadership. They include Bill Worthington, who worked on designs for Nike; Matt Pill, who worked in manufacturing for Nike; and Dan McInenry, who worked in sales for Quiksilver.
OluKai previously partnered with Hawaiian surfing legend Rabbit Kekai.
It also gives donations to help Hawaii’s environment, junior lifeguard programs and other cultural programs.
The shoes and sandals are made in China.
Online Video Production
Costa Mesa-based Innovate Media Group is looking to ramp up sales of its online video productions after changing the way it gets paid.
The company was once solely a production company, making videos for customers who ran them as advertisements on their Web sites.
But after getting a server to host the videos itself, Innovate began to take in revenue for the number of times page viewers clicked on the videos.
This year it’s expecting $2.5 million in sales, which is flat compared to the previous year. Next year it plans to double revenue with its new fee structure.
Cost for production can run a customer anywhere from $1,000 to $35,000. For every 1,000 views a video gets, Innovate receives $5.
Much of its success also depends on its customers’ ability to drive traffic to their sites.
Some of its better-known customers are Santa Ana-based First American Corp., Costa Mesa-based Ditech.com, Irvine’s Freecreditreport.com, Palo Alto-based Hew-lett Packard Co. and Los Angeles-based Napster Inc.
The videos often take the form of spokespeople that pop up from the corners of Web pages.
“Having the videos makes people more likely to convert into customers,” said company founder and Chief Executive John Cecil, who worked in sales at Sunnyvale-based Yahoo Inc. before launching the business five years ago.
Innovate also allows customers to log in to their site to view how Web traffic has been going.
The company initially started as part of Irvine-based Innovate Technology Inc., which makes equipment for motorcycles through its Innovate Motor Sports business.
Cecil is the majority owner with Innovate Technology holding a minority stake.
Innovate has eight employees.
Its largest competitor is Boston-based Rovion Inc. It also competes with Santa Clara-based Pacific Media and New York’s DoubleClick Inc.
But soon Innovate’s customers could become competitors themselves if videos become so commonplace that they are handled in-house, Cecil said.
