Dream to pay off for Seeley Lake couple – Originals by Peacock

Business makes origami fabric covers and cases

Working the old-fashioned way – hand-cutting cloth by the bolt and ironing and reironing thousands of small swatches of fabric – Originals by Peacock http://www.originalsbypeacock.com/default.asp will turn a profit this year for the first time.

By ROBERT STRUCKMAN of the Missoulian

The family-owned and operated Seeley Lake business makes origami checkbook covers and business-card cases from modified batik fabric. The fabric is treated so that it folds just as paper does.

"There’s hope. This year I feel like a new woman," said 45-year-old Nancy Rittel, who started the company with her husband, Guy, and their son, Jeremiah, 13.

The past four years have been a series of tough spots and "learning moments," to use a kind term, Rittel said.

Six years ago the Rittels had professional careers in North Dakota. They had savings, retirement accounts, health insurance and a lingering sense of urgency to ditch it all and return to Montana. Rittel is from Billings. Her husband is from Butte.

"I know it sounds funny, but I had a dream in April 1998. This woman came to me and said, ‘Don’t you know me, I’m Peacock?’ " Rittel said. That’s where the name of the business comes from.

Rittel loved the exuberance and confidence of her dream.

"It was such a different feeling from the 9-to-5 thing," she said. The couple quit their jobs, sold their house and the family moved to Seeley Lake in June 2000.

"Many tears have been shed, but we’ve never looked back," Rittel said.

Financially, the past four years have been difficult. As a business, Peacock had some false starts. One project early on the learning curve involved fancy pillow cases that had to retail for $70. Rittel stopped that and took the lesson to heart, and, when she came up with the idea of origami checkbook covers, the pieces fell into place. The checkbook covers and card cases sell for about $15.

One source of Rittel’s happiness is the tactile nature of the labor itself. She likes the texture of cloth and enjoys folding, she said. Her grandmother taught her to sew as a girl, and she loved folding notes in primary and secondary school.

"I was always folding the napkins for dinner," she said.

The production of her line starts with a bolt of fabric, a cutter and a ruler. Then she irons the wrinkles out of the fabric, uses a proprietary process to stiffen the page, then cuts each to folding size and irons again.

"It’s so cool. It’s just folded fabric," she said of her origami pieces.

This year, she calculates she will make and sell about 2,000 checkbooks and card cases. Half go in art and craft fairs in the summer and the rest are sold wholesale to retailers for the Christmas season. Art Missoula, 219 W. Broadway, and Rockin Rudy’s, 237 Blaine St., sell her items in Missoula. She also sells across the nation, and her next shipment goes to Ohio.

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Originals by Peacock

Nancy Rittel

P.O. Box 46

Seeley Lake, MT 59868

local (406) 677-0197

toll free (888) 663-3306

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She sold her first checkbook covers at an art fair in Seeley Lake in the summer of 2001. She thrives at the fairs, she said, recalling how people sometimes wave a checkbook at her from a distance and shout about how much they love it.

Yet taking a business to the next level is a struggle. Rittel feels the constraints of a small operation that ought to grow. In Seattle last August, she saw two items that would help her process, she said. One is called a mangle. It is basically a circular iron three feet in diameter.

Another machine can precisely cut 6 inches of fabric.

"With a push of a button, ka-chunk, it cuts it," Rittel said.

The two together would cost as much as $10,000.

"How do we go from where we are now to this place," she said.

Rittel also worries about the marketing and packaging of her products.

At this point the family does the labor together. Rittel and her husband do the manufacturing. Their son packages the product in clear bags.

"Maybe there’s a package out there that’s made from better material," she said.

The marketing lessons are coming one at a time, which she knows is too slow. She could pay a professional marketer to help her launch a campaign, but again, it comes down to cash.

"These are personal accessories from Originals by Peacock. I want people to hear that name and go, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got her stuff,’ " Rittel said.

"What an adventure to follow your heart," she said.

When representatives from fabric companies come to town, she feels like the luckiest woman around.

"It’s like a candy store. I want one of those, two of these, one of those," she said.

Reporter Robert Struckman can be reached at 523-5262 or at [email protected].