Profiles in Business: Susan Dollenmaier and Anichini

Vermont Business Magazine, Jul 01, 2003 by Marcel, Joyce

Lot of people love rummaging around thrift shops and flea markets for vintage clothing and antique textiles, but how many of them have turned their passion into a multi-million-dollar luxury textile business?

Susan Dollenmaier, president, owner and co-founder of Anichini, Inc. in Tunbridge has done so with style, taste and panache. Dollenmaier, 57, is a vibrant and dynamic woman with long dark hair, a robust manner and a booming, easy laugh. The eldest of five children, she takes charge naturally; she was her high school's homecoming queen as well as its class president.

Married and divorced three times, most recently to glass artist Robin Mix, she has twin 17-year-old daughters and lives in Tunbridge in a house she built herself. Anichini stores are a textile addict's dream. The West Lebanon, NH, store, for example, is four rooms of luxurious linen velvets, colorful satin quilts lined with cashmere, rich damasks and tapestries, thick towels and thicker bathrobes, fine table linens, pillows, candles, cast-iron beds hung with Indian fabrics fit for a maharaja, and other luscious accouterments for fine home styling.

At the core of the business are Anichini's ultra-luxurious and ultraexpensive sheets and pillowcases, custom woven in Italy, 10,000 meters at a time.

Most people take textiles for granted. They put on clothing and sleep on sheets and dry their dishes with a towel and never think much about it. But to Dollenmaier, textiles are one of the most fundamental elements of our humanity.

"They are what separates man from being naked in the environment," Dollenmaier said. "First there were leathers, then there were textiles. They're part of our remarkable evolution as a species. They're incredibly intimate. It fascinates me to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and see remnants of linen linen holds up forever that were part of togas worn by the Romans. Each culture, each teeny tiny place on the planet, evolved its own take on textiles."

No matter how important textiles might be, does anyone really need to spend $800 or more for set of sheets? Of course not. But the quality of Anichini bedding is so high, the colors and patterns so rare and interesting, and the satiny smoothness of the fine cotton on the skin so addictive that one might soon find oneself thinking, "Well, the money I spend on two nights in a really good hotel would treat me to a pair of sheets that will last a lifetime..."

As you would expect, Anichini sells to many celebrities, including Mariah Carey, Martha Stewart, Oprah, Tom Cruise, Madonna, Cher and Diana Ross. But the store's core clientele is comprised of people, famous or not, who know textiles and want the quality.

"Anichini groupies plan their vacations around coming to the store in West Lebanon," Dollenmaier said. "That store does $2 million a year. Who are these people? They are wealthy or upper-middle-class people who are part of a trend that started in the '90s, of spending more money in their homes. The baby boomers want to be home now. They've done all the rest of it. And the bedroom is at the heart of that. And I'll tell you, once you start sleeping on a good bed and good bedding, there's no going back. It's like the first time you put on a good pair of shoes. It's hard to go out and buy a cheap pair of shoes again."

Because of the high styling of its sheeting, Anichini has virtually no competition, Dollenmaier said.

"There are a lot of people selling sheets, and there are these old European houses, but they're not doing anything

interesting," Dollenmaier said. "They're making the same old products over and over again, like a Rolex watch. I'm not saying that people aren't buying it. But what people get from me is a design-inspired textile. We re-color for the American market. We create a collection: wool crepe for decorative pillows, bedspreads and curtains. Linen velvet in luscious deep colors. Gobelein tapestries that only one company in the world is making."

Anichini imports, exports, wholesales, retails and manufactures textiles. Seventyfive percent comes from Italy as finished products, and 25 percent are "finished" cut off rolls and hemmed - in Tunbridge. Yet no one driving through agricultural Tunbridge would notice that a big textile company is headquartered there. Anichini

works out of five old but restored buildings spread out along Route 110; one of them is an 1860's church.

"I think my real calling in life is saving and restoring old Vermont buildings," Dollenmaier said. "If you drive by, you can't tell there's a major business here. I'm so dedicated to this little river valley that I don't use signs."

In 2001, Dollenmaier won Vermont's Small Business Person of the Year award from the US Small Business Administration. She employs 65 people and imports textiles from Italy, India and most recently, Turkey. She sells Anichini textiles to luxury home furnishing stores all over the United States.

The company has its own retail stores in New York, Dallas and Los Angeles, plus two outlet stores, one in Manchester and one in West Lebanon. And it has two 4,000-square-foot trade showrooms, one in the Atlanta Merchandise Mart and another in Manhattan, in the Textile Building at 230 Fifth Avenue.