Their season to be jolly - L'Image Graphics

Nation's Business, Dec, 1987 by Michael Barrier

Their Season To Be Jolly

Taylor Barnes remembers the day about seven years ago when she and her friend Wayne Wilson, a teacher, went shopping in Los Angeles for a greeting card for one of Wilson's relatives. Wilson, who is black, "started going through the black cards," Barnes recalls, "and they all had these outdated photographs of people in big Afros. Being white, I had never thought about there being a lack of representation. I said, 'Is this it? With all the gorgeous greeting cards on the market, is this all there is on this rack?'"

The answer was yes. Something clicked for Barnes, who was then a free-lance designer. She had never before thought about getting into greeting cards, but "I know I can do better than this," she told Wilson.

She has; so has Wilson. Today, Wilson, 33, and Barnes, 32, own L'Image Graphics, a 4-year-old Culver City, Calif., firm that offers five lines of about 140 minority-oriented greeting cards. Wilson is the firm's president, Barnes its art director.

L'Image's cards are far removed from the cliched cards that once aroused Barnes' dismay. The L'Image cards emphasize elegance and fantasy --night skies strewn with stars, flowing hair dusted with jewels. It seems almost incidental that many of the handsome figures on the cards have dark skins. "We wanted to fill a need in the marketplace," Wilson says, "but we did not want to alienate other buyers."

Wilson and Barnes say that sales in the fiscal year that ended September 30 were close to $300,000, more than double sales in 1986. L'Image turned a profit both years.

Christmas-card orders, which doubled in 1986, have quadrupled this year, and next year L'Image will offer for the first time cards for Valentine's Day, Easter, Mother's Day and Father's Day. Opportunities are popping up to put L'Image's card designs on posters and stationery.

"Sometimes we get really excited," Barnes says, "and think maybe we should go for big money. And we have to kind of rein ourselves in."

Caution--and persistence--have been the pair's hallmarks since they hit on their idea. For two years, before going into business themselves, they scouted card shops, making sure that no existing lines duplicated what they wanted to do. Then they tested the market in 1982, by designing seven Christmas cards, printing fewer than 1,000 of each, and selling them in a few local stores. With all the signs positive, they raised around $100,000 in start-up money (some of it from actor Sidney Poitier and Motown Records' Berry Gordy) and began slowly breaking into retail stores across the country.

L'Image's strong Christmas sales last year impressed some retailers who had been reluctant to carry the cards, and now L'Image products adorn racks in I. Magnin, Macy's and other upscale stores.

Thanks to such breakthroughs, it seems clear what the future holds for L'Image: many happy returns.

Photo: Taylor Barnes and Wayne Wilson: Their L'Image Graphics in Culver City, Calif., produces minority-oriented greeting cards with universal appeal.