Toland changes owner, name and sets direction for growth

By Cinde W. Ingram -- Home Accents Today, 10/1/2006

After acquiring the assets and brand of Toland Enterprises, industry veteran Bruce Solly said he foresees the garden accessory vendor's future as being "more and better of the same."

Toland's name change to Toland Home & Garden was his first noticeable alteration, but retailers can expect a bigger selection of product introductions, starting in January.

"What we are doing is becoming more fashion forward," Solly said. "We're reducing our SKU count and yet we're adding more new designs than we've ever added in a season — both flags and mats. What we want to do is continue the tradition of leading by design."

Solly, who was Toland's vice president of marketing and product development, narrowed its inventory from about 500 products to 300 of its best-selling product designs.

"We're trying to renew the retailers' confidence in us," Solly said. "It's been a wonderful brand for years and we've stumbled in the last year since Hurricane Katrina."

Although Toland's sales office remains in Mandeville, La., its headquarters moved in September to Port Townsend, Wash., where its marketing office had been located for some time, Solly said.

The Toland team recently negotiated changes with its flag supplier to eliminate a high upfront fee for start-up of designs, granting more flexibility for developing new designs, Solly said.

At the winter markets, Toland will introduce about 70 new flag designs, compared with 15 to 20 last January. Also post-hurricane logistics distribution problems have been solved.

"All of the flags and mats, which we consider the soft goods, will ship out of one location in North Carolina," Solly said. "And all of the hard goods, which are the garden gifts will continue to ship out of the Seattle area." A Georgia-based distribution center recently was closed.

It's been about a year ago since Toland began offering garden gifts, which quickly represented about 35% of its sales. "We expect that to expand up to about 50% of our sales," Solly said. "We've got about 15 new garden gift products we're introducing in January. We're going to be more aggressive than we've ever been with new products."

Solly's career began with working for Solly's Choice, founded by his grandfather in 1919 as a seed company in Seattle.

In 1994, Solly started his own company, Garden at Home, and ran it about seven years before selling. Over the years of exhibiting at trade shows and sometimes sharing showroom space, Solly became friends with Toland founder and former owner David T. Sands.

"He said, 'Bruce why don't you join our company and bring your creative side?'" Solly recalled. In the year and a half since he joined Toland, Solly enjoyed working with Sands, a kindred spirit who understood product development in the growing garden gift niche.

David and his wife Jill Sands, who founded Toland Enterprises 30 years ago, will continue to serve as consultants to Toland Home and Garden. The Sands said they believe their company could not have been passed into better hands.

"Bruce is widely respected in our industry, having been a true leader in the development of garden gifts and 'garden lifestyle' products," Sands said. "In his time with Toland, Bruce was responsible for creating all of the best-selling product categories introduced in our January 2006 catalog."

For more information about Toland Home & Garden's upcoming product line, call 800-989-6287 or visit its Web site at www.TolandHomeGarden.com.