By Erica Kirkland
Nora Napientek, co-founder of Nora Fleming, one of the industry’s bestselling brands.
At the turn of the century (sounds fancier than 24 years ago), collectibles, crystal and tabletop were becoming practically obsolete categories for gift store owners. Consumers didn’t want figurines in their living rooms or floral china plates on their tables. But all of this was unknown to a young artistic entrepreneur in Illinois at the precipice of creating a line that would come to dominate our industry by combining two declining categories – tabletop and collectibles.
Most of us in the business are familiar with the origin story of Nora Fleming. In a nutshell, Nora was running a pottery studio where consumers came to paint platters for different occasions when she realized that she could mold a decorative miniature figurine and insert it into a platter by drilling a hole, saving customers the trouble of painting and storing multiple platters. The first decorative mini was a little bird, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Most people see the glamorous side of Nora Fleming. Nora herself has a personal fashion style that is courageous and glamorous. She’s always been attracted to expressing her bold creative side through her fashion, makeup and hair choices, but Nora’s beauty extends far beyond the aesthetic to her very soul.
The company, co-founded by Nora and her now deceased brother Jon Neidlinger, is one which has always woven business acumen hand-in-hand with charitable endeavors and just being really decent, honest people who want to honor the retailers that bring the Nora Fleming brand into their stores.
They are one of the few companies around dedicated solely to the independent retail channel which is another reason why we selected Nora Fleming as the first company to profile in our first VendorBeat section, now a reoccurring department in the publication where we go behind the scenes with an award-winning supplier.
If you aren’t a subscriber and/or didn’t receive the March edition in which we profiled Nora Fleming, we turned the article into a series of images which paid subscribers can view below. If you have a paid subscription and would rather read a pdf version of the article, email me at erica@giftbeat.com .
P.S. I’ve been having so much fun conducting these interviews. I’m planning to record future interviews with suppliers and store owners with the hopes of turning the recordings into a down-to-earth podcast on independent retailing and the vendors that serve them:)