The Connecticut Store

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Made, Marketed and Sold Here
By STEPHEN L. PURDY 

While he doesn't single out any one reason for the state's products and services not being known, he illustrates it by citing a purchasing problem when beginning the new business. He said he was impressed by Waterbury Neckwear, a producer on the same street as the store (but part of the M. Aron Corporation of South Norwalk), and so he decided to order from them. The process was like following a maze. After being shuttled to his neighbor's New York office, then to a Las Vegas trade show, he ordered four dozen ties -- which did not make it to the store. He said he finally made an arrangement with the manager of the Waterbury operation, and ''the store got ties.'' 

Mr. Paine described keeping in touch with small but thriving state businesses who sold products at his store and who shared similar frustrations. Matthew Bristow, the chief executive officer of the felt and blanket maker Charles W. House & Sons in Unionville, and Brooks H. Titcomb, president of Woodbury Pewter, and Mr. Paine realized they needed an organization to compete, and out of these informal talks grew the Made in Connecticut Guild Ltd. 
The Guild is a year-old nonprofit organization of some 40 members who pay dues and have twin goals: to educate retailers and consumers that these products are here. ''Connecticut residents will buy Connecticut first,'' Mr. Paine says in a kind of creed, if ''the product is at least equal in quality and price -- and they know about it.'' 

Key marketing strategies begin in the Howland-Hughes department store. Next to a display for blankets by Charles W. House, which the store presents as comparable to or better than those from L. L. Bean of Maine, the customer sees an enlargement from the Bean catalogue, with its higher prices. Mr. Paine explains that, with retail spending in the state estimated at $70 million a year, the customer who chooses the local blanket makes a difference. ''Any fractional change, not because of patriotism but because the manufacturers' earned it, is mind-blowing,'' he says. 

A glance around the store shows products from Knitworks of Harwinton, the Great American Puzzle Factory of South Norwalk, Old Saybrook Pottery Place of Sharon and the Woodpecker of Westbrook. Even the restaurant serves coffee roasted in Hartford and tea from R. C. Bigelow in Fairfield.  Formal promotion by the Guild includes advertising in all media, at hotels, with tourism bureaus and on the Internet. The Internet, Mr.Paine says, is particularly useful for people who used to live in the state but now live elsewhere. Advertising has had a recent boost from popular culture. The store is an outlet for Waterbury Companies Inc., a nearly two-century-old manufacturer of buttons that has supplied the military and municipal services, sports tournaments and clothing makers as well as the crew
of the Titanic; it's now ''the worldwide marketer and distributor for the replicas of Titanic uniform buttons,'' 

Mr. Titcomb, of Woodbury Pewter, sees a role for the Guild in organizing and coordinating information. For instance, after the Guild caught the eye of the Governor and the state's Department of Economic and Community Development at an Eastern States Exposition, Mr. Titcomb says, the state agency referred out-of-state inquiries for statemade products to the Guild. ''Purchasers contacted the state, which in turn called us,'' he said. And Mr. Bristow, of Charles W. House, said the Guild persuaded him to open a retail outlet last year which, like The Connecticut Store, sells statemade products. ''That decision took me from serving just the industrial market,'' he said, ''and would never have been made without the soft-nudging of the Guild.'' 

Mr. Paine says local initiatives may encourage state manufacturers to centralize, placing porcelain and glass enamel, for example, or pewter and engraving, in the same building, preferably at a crossroads like Hartford, Danbury or Mystic. 
The Guild also works on companies' awareness of other businesses in their own backyards. One of the biggest company-meets-company stories is Waterbury Leatherworks and Charles W. House. The result: collaborative manufacture of a handbag that now hangs in the center of the store. The Danbury Square Box Company, one of the store's vendors with products not finished for retail, has acquired three new accounts in joining the Guild. ''I expect to get more business,'' said the company's president, John Allen, also a Guild board member. 

Mr. Paine explained that such cooperation was born at the end of a long road of indifference by advertisers and producers not considering Connecticut a market. In recent years, he adds, this negligence was fueled by business downturns and uncertainties, like those at Stanley Works and Electric Boat, Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky. 
But the state is now keeping its own doors open, he added, and the overall climate is changing. Indeed, a spokesman for the Department of Economic and Community Development, Chris Cooper, says that, although his department has not provided the Guild with financial assistance, its exhibit at the Eastern States Exposition was ''one of the most popular.'' 

The Guild has found perhaps its biggest friend in the Manufacturing Alliance of Connecticut, whose main legislative issues are workers' and unemployment compensation, energy initiatives and taxes. ''Anything that could help a manufacturing company grow, expand or remain in Connecticut'' is welcome says the Alliance's executive
director, Frank J. Johnson. ''If in two or three years 'Made in Connecticut' is a household thought,'' said Mr. Titcomb, ''we go beyond there, much as 'Made in Vermont' products has.''  Mr. Paine said he believes that, all things being equal, Connecticut residents will buy first in their state. ''And we don't have equal quality and price -- we're better,'' 

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