Knowing of her cool design sense from her work at Knoll Furniture, her friends asked her to help decorate their kids rooms. Allison Krongard loved the modern esthetic and wanted to use large graphics and murals on the walls. She did a lot of research but couldn’t find the kinds of stick-on wall appliqués that she wanted. Stenciling was not an option and painted murals costs a fortune and would be costly to change as a child’s interests changed. She looked for a product and couldn’t find it. A light bulb went off, if she couldn’t find it, maybe she should create it.
She felt she had a great idea and it was worth taking a chance. Selling her apartment to raise funds, Allison quit her job of 9 years in sales at Knoll and went all in. She spent a year attending adhesive conventions to learn about the industry and develop her product. “I started by licensing designs from Marimekko to create large wall art.”
Proudly manufacturing in America, Allison created a temporary adhesive product that was non-toxic, a high quality vinyl, that is easliy applied and can be removed without damaging the walls. With themes of all sorts including birds, butterflies, and flowers, elephants, dogs and cats, buildings, cars and boats, popsicles, clouds and rainbows – the design ideas are endless.
Working with her friend’s son on his room, she asked him what he wanted on his walls. The child loved meeting with her and she treated him like a client. The mom even called and told her, “You cannot cancel; my son has been planning his meeting with you for days.” Allison realized two things, “It was important to the child to be involved in the creation of their environment and I wanted to create a cool high end wall art for kids that could easily change as their tastes and interests changed.”
With her first run of 5 designs, she placed an order of 2000 pieces. She had a commitment from a design store in New Cannan CT, so she was confident enough to take a chance on a large order. Turning her apartment into a central shipping base, on many days Allison could be seen pushing a large cart of boxes down the streets of Manhattan to the UPS mailing store. Marketing her wall candy to kids’ design stores, orders were increasing so after two years, Allison turned to a warehouse in VA that could ship her product more easily.
She did the PR herself, using the internet to get contact information for the editors of regional newspapers around the country, sending them her story. “It was a grass roots effort that paid off.” Meeting her husband on a blind date, her company was in its fledging years when they got married and had kids. But it only took a year to be profitable after launching in 2001.
Wanting to scale her business, Allison is working with a few well know designers and licensing their designs into wall art. She’s now branching beyond kids into teens, young adults and even adult decals. Allison even invented peel and stick chalk-board wall paper and holds a patent on the product. “My 3 year old was writing on the walls with chalk and I thought it would be cool if there were adhesive chalkboard.”
“The best thing about having my own company is that I get to go to my kids’ school events, I make my own schedule.” Early in her career she pursued banking jobs with her economics major but was bored to tears in the interviews, she knew it wasn’t for her. Allison says, “I like to be in charge of my own destiny, the harder I work the more I make.” Now with her product in over 2000 stores worldwide, and with two kids ages 5 and 7 , she feels the gamble was worth it. “Eleven years ago it didn’t feel like a huge chance,” but when you see the Wall Candy Art used in the windows of Barneys in New York, you know she was right to roll the dice.
Contact: [email protected], www.wallcandyarts.com
VentureMom Tip
When you hit on a great idea, take a chance and make it happen.
