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Where the tropics and desert meet

There were no wild dreams of entrepreneurship for the Herbingers. Really, it started because of a frog.

By JODIE TILLMAN
Published September 17, 2006

NEW PORT RICHEY - Entrepreneurs often like to say that they started with a dream. Or an idea. Or a vision.

Dorothy and Ron Herbinger dispense with the abstract. When they tell the story of their business, they start with quirky specificity.

They bought a frog.

They bought the tin-glazed ceramic amphibian in 2001, and here they are now: Two middle-aged high school sweethearts from Pennsylvania running a home decor and garden store called Southwest & Tropical.

Not surprisingly, merchandise generally falls into those two decorative motifs - Southwestern and tropical. Beyond the thematic consistency, the items are a whimsical mix: lamps shaped like dolphins and pottery decorated with a howling wolf. Rustic hutches made of old church doors and pelican lawn ornaments. Granite cherub fountains to put in the garden and dream catchers to hang on the walls.

It is a mix on which the Herbingers have staked their livelihoods.

With no other full-time employees, she works at the store 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. By day, he works in the store and installs the fountains that they sell, but by night, he's earning extra money working the Continental reservation counter at Tampa International Airport.

"At least we've done something different," said Dorothy Herbinger, 54. "I was putting in this many hours for other people, so why not do it for yourself?"

As they like to say, the life changes started with the Talavera - a type of tin-glazed pottery - frog that they bought in Mexico on their 25th wedding anniversary and put on the front of their house. People asked, "Can you get us some of those?"

She had worked in management at a number of electric companies. He was a real estate agent and a rose enthusiast, raising more than 100 rose bushes in their Tampa yard.

They always liked art and paid a lot of attention to the decor of their home. The next thing they knew, they were buying more pottery and wall art. By 2003, they had quit their full-time jobs and opened a booth at the Oldsmar Flea Market. They wanted to do more.

"We wanted something we could do together," she said.

They ran across the owners of a well-established Southwestern decor store in Tarpon Springs who were looking to sell.

And so a home and garden store of two themes - Southwest & Tropical - was born in 2004. They stayed in Tarpon Springs, ran out of space and last year bought a 3,600-square-foot store on State Road 54, just east of Grand Boulevard, in part because of the area's high traffic volume.

To save money, they hired no employees, other than on an occasional, short-term basis.

Dorothy Herbinger, who used to oversee procurement of such items as poles for the electric company, now hunts down cactus chandeliers to send to a Wisconsin customer who had stopped by their store while visiting Florida.

Ron Herbinger, whose back-breaking work used to be his prize-winning roses, now heaves a scallop-shaped fountain into the back of his pickup to deliver to a customer.

"When I hit the sack at night," he said, "I don't get up."

They go to Mexico to buy some of their pieces. They order others from more than a hundred vendors, both national and international. The Southwestern carpets, for instance, come from Texas, Arizona and, of all places, Bulgaria and Belgium.

The couple also get shoppers looking for something specific. If they don't have it, they hit the catalogs and the phones. That's the best part.

"We get a charge out of it," said Ron Herbinger, 55. "We like running down stuff for people."

And then there is the hard part. As is the case with any small business, one of the most difficult tasks is letting people know you exist.

Most of it is word of mouth from the customers they had in Tarpon Springs. A lot of the home decor draws snowbirds and vacationing Canadians. Their fountains and garden art often go to homes in some of the newer subdivisions. They have a Web site: www.southwesternaccents.com.

Nobody said it would be easy. And the Herbingers said they never had any illusions that it would be.

The business may have started on a playful note, but its evolution has been deliberate. They started small. They absorbed a popular business that already had a customer base. And they're not talking about making big money yet.

"You really don't make a profit for the first five years," Dorothy Herbinger said. "That's the rule of thumb for small businesses."

She declined to say how much the company has made in sales at any of its locations. She said they increased sales by 30 percent after moving to New Port Richey, where they were able to expand their fountain and garden line.

So she will keep working her long days. He will keep changing from fountain deliverer to reservation agent on a daily basis.

And as for the frog that started it all, it's still on the front of their house.

Jodie Tillman can be reached at jtillman@sptimes.com or (727) 869-6247.

[Last modified September 17, 2006, 06:36:33]