Long-time banker turns promoter to launch Take it Home
Right before Memorial Day weekend Jean Sumner was hitting the shops in Ely, trying to convince store owners to stock her company’s brand new DVD, “Take the Boundary Waters Home with You.” Six of them did, she says, just in time for the first holiday tourist crush of the summer.
Her secret weapon: She brings a portable DVD player on every sales call, to show the animated montage of nature photography and music. To see the DVD is to love it, she says, both to use as an electronic postcard to remember a trip and to play for stress reduction. Her company, Take it Home Inc. in Duluth, contracts with photographers to purchase the pictures, and a second local company sells them nature music. Co-owners are Marsha Blackburn and Marcia Doty.
Sumner spent 25 years as a banker in Duluth, and was head of business banking for Wells Fargo there when she left to start Take it Home. On her Ely sales call, she showed her promotional skills by getting the radio station and a bunch of newspapers to promise to do stories on the company. “Maybe I was miscast for 25 years,” she says with a laugh. “This is a lot more fun, I tell you.”
The company has produced three DVDs, on Duluth, the North Shore and the Boundary Waters. A fourth, Take a White Christmas Home with You, is in production. She sells them wholesale to retailers, who in turn sell them for $19.95 to $24.95.
She says she’s not sure what sales will be this year. “The way I look at it is, the three places where we are have 5.7 million visitors a year. Ten percent of that would be 570,000 DVDs. If we can sell 1 to 2 percent…” Next up: She’s trying to get the product in stores at the airport in the Twin Cities
Sumner says the company’s shipment of its first DVD, Take Duluth Home with You, included trouble. A photographer wanted to see it, so he bought it, popped it in his home DVD player, and up came the R-rated movie “Seduced.” “It’s in our box, with our name,” Sumner recalls, “and we’ve just sold it at the Junior League Festival of Trees.”
She and her partners opened every box, checked the DVDs and got the right ones back on the shelves. Then they called the media and generated lots of coverage of the snafu.
Jean Sumner, Take it Home Inc.: 218.390.4757; www.takeithomedvd.com
