Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Eye candy

A store on Gandy sells decorations for the home and garden, a business that has a worldly - and Maryland - pedigree.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published September 20, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - Hoping to capitalize on the development boom of the Gandy corridor, a Maryland transplant has opened a spinoff of the family business in home and garden decor.

"People would always say to us, 'Why don't you have a store in Florida?' " said VanDuZee Flynn.

Flynn worked for years in his mother's Ocean City, Md., store, Pottery Place, before moving south and opening Don Bazaar on the east end of Gandy Boulevard.

The store has an eclectic mix of lawn sculptures and wind chimes, metal fish and suns, outdoor fireplaces and indoor wall hangings. The colorful array of products come from Haiti, India, China the United States and more, but their appeal is largely aesthetic, not multicultural. Flynn, who runs the store with his wife, Kimberleigh, said it mimics the business his mother ran for 35 years on the famous Maryland Boardwalk.

"It came to me that there's not a store here like my mom's," said Flynn, 43, who has lived here on and off for 12 years.

Flynn left Ocean City after working for his mother, spending years as a bartender. After joining a friend in Pinellas, he continued in hospitality with Kimberleigh.

Then it occurred to them that late nights and inconsistent pay weren't the way they wanted to spend their working lives.

"It's a maturity thing," said Kim, 41. "You can't be the only person in the nightclub getting older."

So six years ago, the couple decided to open a store, sharing their plans with friends.

Flynn's mother soon died, and he had to return to Ocean City to take care of the business. His family eventually decided that his sister would run that store. Flynn came back to Florida to open his own.

He said it was easy to create the business because he had connections from Maryland but also because he grew up in retail.

"When I was a kid, there were no allowances. You worked on the boardwalk," he said of the wooden path fronting the beach on Maryland's Eastern Shore. "The boardwalk has its own flow. You have to have the rap and the skill."

As a customer enters the store, Flynn engages her in friendly conversation -- part of market research. Where are you from? How did you hear of us? Is there something particular you are looking for? All in a jovial, staccato patter that sounds like a chat but feeds him data about what is popular and who is shopping.

The store, at first glance, looks scattered but there is a deliberate path, Flynn said, so a customer never runs into a dead end and always has something to look at. He is ready to answer questions but he also marks the merchandise for curious shoppers.

"He's got a real good head for that," Kim said.

Strings of small, stuffed birds hang in a clump near the window. Flynn said people used to ignore the Indian handicrafts until he labeled them.

"They're called birds of prosperity," he said. "As soon as you put that on there, people say, 'Oh, I've got to have that.' "

Business has been brisk, said Flynn, who draws traffic from new housing developments on Gandy Boulevard and from South Tampa and the Old Northeast.

Flynn said he's enjoying self-employment, even though he has yet to start earning big money.

Paul Swider can be reached at 892-2271 or pswider@sptimes.com or by participating in itsyourtimes.com.

[Last modified September 19, 2006, 23:03:55]