Basking in reflected glory - kaleidoscope marketing

Nation's Business, March, 1988 by Sharon Nelton

Basking In Reflected Glory

When Carolyn Bennett was 8 years old, her family took her to visit the Corning Glass Works in Corning, N.Y. At the end of the tour, she was allowed to pick out a souvenir in the gift shop. One of the items available was a kaleidoscope. That was not what she chose.

"The moment we left, I regretted that decision," she says. "From that time on, I was always very fixated on the kaleidoscope I'd left behind."

After the Corning visit, Bennett learned how to make a kaleidoscope by reading an old encyclopedia in her family's home in Narrowsburg, N.Y.

She has since turned her fixation into C. Bennett Scopes, Inc., a Media, Pa., kaleidoscope design and manufacturing firm with 1987 sales of $350,000.

In 1973 Bennett became a high-school art teacher in Galway, N.Y. In her spare time, she began to make kaleidoscopes "to amuse myself," she says. "I gave them to all my friends. Everybody who had a birthday or got married would get one."

Then a friend asked Bennett to make a kaleidoscope that could be given as a birthday gift to an aunt. It was the first 'scope she sold.

Realizing she was committed, she quit teaching in 1978 and moved to Media --chosen for its milder climate and its access to Philadelphia, "a comfortable city to be around."

It took Bennett several years to sell her first 1,000 kaleidoscopes. Now C. Bennett Scopes produces more than 50,000 'scopes a year, retailing from $10 to $450.

The "Sea Scope" is filled with tiny sea shells suspended in glycerin; the "Symphonoscope" contains music symbols, and the "Little Jewel," a miniature 3 1/2 inches long, holds gem stones and can be worn as a necklace. The rectangular-shaped "Luna," with interchangeable chambers, sells for $425.

Several years ago a customer wanted to propose to his girlfriend and asked Bennett to custom-make a kaleidoscope with the message, "Carol, will you marry me?" Bennett made the 'scope--and Carol said yes.

Bennett's most popular item is not a kaleidoscope at all but "Crystal Vision Junior," a device that Bennett calls a "teleidoscope" and that retails for $16. It contains mirrors, as a kaleidoscope does, but it does not contain the bits of colored glass that combine with the mirrors to produce the kaleidoscope's constantly shifting patterns. Instead, at one end of the teleidoscope is a lucite sphere that acts as a lens. Whatever you point it at--flowers, your cat or the bathroom sink--is reflected as a multisided design.

In January, Bennett introduced the "Astroscope," a collection of 12 kaleidoscopes, each one a visual interpretation of an astrological sign.

She actually designed it a dozen years ago but knew she did not have the marketing know-how then to create the impact she wanted.

While most of Bennett's 1,200 accounts are galleries and stores, she is producing custom-designed promotional 'scopes for increasing numbers of corporations and institutions, including Du Pont, Westinghouse (containing the company's familiar "W"), Clairol, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Smithsonian Institution and the New York Times.

Bennett the artist became Bennett the businesswoman by "evolution," she says. From the beginning, she stalked trade shows, such as the New York Gift Show, to see how products were packaged. She scouted stores in downtown Philadelphia while carrying a cardboard box filled with "six or seven" kaleidoscopes; she sold all of them at once to a toy shop.

She sold at craft shows, graduating to craft shows that had wholesale days set aside for buyers from galleries. Now she exhibits mainly at wholesale events.

For test marketing, she says, she carries each new prototype around in her purse and shows it "to everybody that I meet." By watching how they react to it, she can judge what changes to make in the design. "I use my guts and my intuition. I can tell if something's going to work."

Years ago, her guts and her intuition told her that kaleidoscopes were going to be hot, and now she is riding a market that some estimates place at $5 million annual sales and still growing.

Bennett sees nothing but growth in her own future.

Last October she moved from a 1,400-square-foot space to one with 2,500 square feet, adding a retail shop in the process. Her employees jumped from six in 1986 to 13 last year. She thinks she will increase annual sales by at least $100,000 this year.

Bennett has added a paperweight called "Fondl-it" to her line, and last month she began filling orders for a $450 camera lens she invented. The "Scopelens" mounts on any 35mm camera and, when you take a picture, gives you multiple images. "It makes a kaleidoscopic design out of reality," Bennett explains.

The latest evidence of Bennett's success? One of her products is in the movies.

In the last scene of "Broadcast News," a kaleidoscope is given to a little boy. It is camouflaged by a big bow, but, Bennett says with a chuckle, "I recognized it right off the bat."

Photo: When viewed through one of her own products, kaleidoscope maker Carolyn Bennett of Media, Pa., becomes a many-sided design.