Zen Bears

Busting prostitutes and other criminals on the streets of London was Deb Canham's first career. It was a singular passion.

But after eight years, Canham concluded a police officer's life was both too dangerous and came with too little pay for someone with two young children. So one night in 1987 Canham launched her second career while she sat at her kitchen table.

That epiphany eventually led Canham to move to Sarasota, where she has since built up one of the more unique businesses on the Gulf Coast, if not all of Florida: miniature collectible stuffed animals. In addition to a second career, the experience delivered Canham a lifetime's worth of business lessons.

Canham runs Venice-based Deb Canham Artist Designs, which manufactures and distributes miniature figurines in a variety of fabrics, styles and animal and character types. Canham handles the designs. A team of 16 freelance employees in China handles manufacturing.

The product list ranges from flying pigs to velvet dragons to lots of bears in a variety of shapes and sizes. All the animals and characters are fully jointed and measure between 1.4 inches and 5 inches. Most of the products are made of mohair, a higher-priced wool.

The business model is built around exclusivity. While there is a low-price line, Canham focuses on one-of-a-kind figures that sell from $400 to $7,500 apiece. A Disney-themed bear sold for $7,000 at the Disney Doll and Teddy Bear Convention, for example. And earlier this year a British Royal Wedding limited edition run of 140 mohair bears designed to resemble Prince William and Princess Kate sold out at $150 a pair.

Canham sells the miniatures to boutiques, which in turn sell to collectors and hobbyists. She also sells her products through her own website.

“I've been able to perfect miniature, which not a lot of people can do,” says Canham. “I'm probably the only miniature bear company in the world.”

For a time, the miniature bear business was booming. In the mid-2000s, Canham's company approached $1 million in annual revenues. It had 10 employees.

But the recession cut into at least 50% of the company's annual sales. The firm now has three employees, with annual revenues in the $400,000-$500,000 range. Still, Canham says profits are up, partially from a payroll reduction, and partially from a hyper-focus on expenses.

“The problem with what I sell is that these are just extras,” Canham says. “It's nothing you have to buy.”

China, meanwhile, has taught Canham some valuable business lessons. “You can't be sure of quality in China,” Canham says, echoing many other Gulf Coast entrepreneurs. That's why Canham provides her Chinese partners with European fabrics and needles, to monitor quality.

Moreover, Canham won't just give over her prototypes or designs to a factory manager and let the Chinese take it from there. That lack of control is weighted with potential problems, she says.

Canham instead travels to China every three months with designs and meets with her crew of manufacturers and assemblers. The freelances have been with Canham almost since she started the business. Like Canham, some began as mothers and are now young grandmothers. “We don't have a factory per se,” says Canham. “We work out of one person's house.”

Canham founded her company in 1996. She worked at other miniature collectible design firms in Europe and the U.S. for a decade before going out on her own.

She sometimes misses her police career — though not too much. “My passion (now) is things that are small, but you can see so much in them,” Canham says. “It's like a Zen thing.”