Profiles in Business: Susan Dollenmaier and Anichini

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

"Everywhere in the world you go, we look exactly the same," she said. Dollenmaier and Patrizia Anichini sold old textiles for almost five years, building more contacts and confidence with each sale. "I was driving back and forth to New York in an old baby blue bread truck, the kind with the side door that slides back and forth," Dollenmaier said. "It had no heat. In the winter I'd stop in Brattleboro, buy a pint of brandy and drink it all the way to New York just to stay warm."

By then, Dollenmaier and Anichini had incorporated as a business, Anichini Galleries.

"We were trying to come up with a name that was a combination of our two names," Dollenmaier said. "I said, 'Let's just call it Anichini. It's a cool name and Americans are going to love it. The corporation used the word 'gallery' because we did antique textiles shows, antique jewelry shows, African textile shows, furniture, and all sorts of other things." The partners were now renting a loft in New York. It was a showroom by day and a living space at night.

'I would get a truckload of stuff, put a collection together, put it in the loft and invite the wholesalers first, then friends, and then friends of friends," Dollenmaier said. "We got a big mailing list going. We would do this three or four or five times a year and make a big pile of money. But, of course, you run out. That's the problem with being an antique dealers, one day you can make $5,000, and then you might not make anything for a long time. But the whole entrepreneurial spirit got imbued into me."

The company developed a good reputation among wealthy women. One socialite bought the clothes for her daughter's wedding from Anichini. Then she told her friends, and they started finding their way to the loft. When Barney's, then a chic department store, opened a home-styling section, it gave Anichini a small boutique.

Even though they were building a brand, the business was still hand-to-mouth.

"We would have no money on a Friday, so we would take old books down to Barnes & Noble and sell them to get through the weekend," Dollenmaier said. "Then we'd make a big killing. We sold a Belgian lace wedding veil to a wealthy woman for $15,000. We said, 'Oh, baby, we're rolling in it now!' Today I wouldn't sell it for $100,000." When the partners did their first trade show, it cost $5,000 to rent the space and they sold nothing. But they made many contacts, including two Lebanese brothers whose father, then 98 and in a nursing home, had once been the largest lace importer in the United States. "He still has all the lace in a warehouse somewhere, and they don't know what to do with it," Dollenmaier said, slipping into the present tense again. "So we buy it from them for $100,000 we don't have. We take some of the good pieces out and sell them and get it down to $50,000, and after that we make payments. It took years for us to pay those guys back. But it really got us going with some fabulous merchandise."

Anichini New

Around 1983, Dollenmaier and Mix went to Italy. There she encountered artisans on the island of Burano, who were hand-embroidering fine linen sheets and sewing handmade lace to the edge of others. This gave Dollenmaier the inspiration that changed her life.