Profile of Success: Ashton Harrison, founder/president, Shades of Light

Background: After helping another home furnishings marketer expand from seven retail stores to 40, Ashton Harrison decided to strike out on her own and founded Shades of Light as a retail store in 1986 in Richmond, Va.

Nearly a decade after starting her company, Harrison noted that many of the shoppers in her store were from out of town. Wanting to better serve these customers, she launched a catalog in 1995 so, “we didn’t have to open retail stores all over the place,” she reflects.

Biggest initial challenge: Although she had a valid reason for starting the catalog, Harrison admits she didn’t know what she was doing when she put the first book in the mail.

How she dealt with it: A friend of Children’s Wear Digest kids clothing catalog founder Philip Klaus, Harrison credits Klaus with teaching her about everything from catalog layout to what names would be appropriate to mail.

Most surprising part of the catalog startup: “You have to have a lot of money in your pocket before you can turn a profit with a catalog,” Harrison says. “The catalog cost us about $1 million to get started ... and it took probably five years to turn a profit.”

Biggest Mistake: Hiring the wrong people and not reacting to it quickly enough. “Some people are inherently negative, and have destructive effects on sales and morale,” she says. Learning from past hiring mistakes, Harrison looks for negative cues during the hiring process, such as talking poorly of previous employers or co-workers.

Keys to success:
• Exclusive products and product development. Harrison has been moving the company toward carrying nearly 100 percent exclusive products in order to combat price-slashing online competitors. And because Shades of Light has designers, painters and electricians on staff, the company can take advantage of the latest home décor trends; for example, turning a fashionable vase into an exclusive lamp.

• Always finding ways to please customers. Among Harrison’s pet peeves are policies that allow sales and customer service reps to tell customers what they can and can’t do. “I always want them to work something out with the customer,” she says. “If a product stops working, we’re going to take it back, fix it or give the customer a new one,” rather than create a return policy that limits customers’ options.

What aspects of the business appeal to Harrison? The excitement of putting a new book together. “You put this whole creative thing together, put it in the mail, hold your breath and wait for the sales to come in,” Harrison says. “Then you get the chance to analyze and say this new idea worked or that idea didn’t work.” She contrasts this with the retail model, which often requires her to ask customers what they think about a recent window display, then try to connect their answers to store sales.

Hobbies: An avid skier, Harrison and her husband have a second home in Wintergreen, Va.

Company founded: 1986
Catalog established: 1995
Headquarters: Richmond, Va.
Primary merchandise: lighting fixtures, rugs and curtains
# of SKUs: 1,000 catalog; 9,000 Web
Customer demographics: middle to upper income women, interior designers
Sales channels: catalog, 58 percent; Internet, 26 percent; retail, 16 percent
# of employees: 55

Full interview also available.