Retail: Jobs Landed

Brilliant Sky Toys and Books is a specialty retail chain of toy stores.  Founded in Lansing in 2002, the chain started with a single store and has now expanded to 12 stores across the nation and there are plans in place to open at least 20 more in the next few years.  Until I came on board, the corporate staff consisted entirely of the family members that founded it.  With the planned expansion of the franchise business, they knew they needed to more bandwidth to handle the growth...and that's where I came in!

My position requires me to wear many hats.  My office (which has big red polka dots on the walls!!) is located at the flagship store.  While I am responsible for the marketing and promotion of the Okemos store, my main responsibilities are on the franchise side of the business.  I am responsible for a variety of projects that ultimately represent the Brilliant Sky brand directly to both prospective franchisees and consumers.  I also oversee many areas that benefit our individual stores, such as establishing co-op advertising and payment term arrangements with our vendors and designing marketing materials and programs, including the catalog program.  

If you have ever been in Brilliant Sky Toys and Books, you will understand why I love to work here.  The store is amazing!   Not only is it beautifully designed, it is chock full of the finest toys, crafts and games.  Having two young children of my own, I know how important it is to give them high quality playthings that they love to play with.  Every time a delivery arrives, I am like a kid at Christmas opening the box to see what we are going to be selling!

Follow us on Twitter @BrilliantToys and check our facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Brilliant-Sky-Toys-Books-Okemos-MI/262775248496

I design many of the t-shirts for our website. I write the copy for the site, and send out our company newsletters. I manage our marketing efforts, both online and locally, and handle all-things social media. Because we are a smaller (but growing!) company, I also handle a lot of our day-to-day operations and assist customers with design work for custom apparel orders.

RetroDuck started as a small college business.  We took old vintage heat transfers (hence "Retro") and applied them to new t-shirts.  Living in East Lansing, people heard we made t-shirts, and thought that we could print custom apparel for their events, organizations, etc.  We couldn't in the beginning, but we were being asked constantly.  So, we invested what little we had in expanding our business.  Now, 90% of what we do is printing custom apparel for people in the mid-Michigan area.