Tender Heart Treasures creates 90 percent of its own products—and considers this one of its competitive advantages.

By Alicia Orr Suman

DeGraeve adds, “Our customers vote with their dollars each time we produce a new line. It’s fun to watch [this process] and reorder their favorites.”

Two Catalogs for Two Audiences

When Tender Heart Treasures began its second catalog title, A Special Place, five years ago the goal was to fill product needs for an emerging niche of its customer base. “We had touched on different decors in our main book, and the Victorian products seemed to have a strong enough niche to warrant their own catalog,” Watanabe-Gerdes explains.