Jordan Fordyce is the CEO of Stewart Drummond Studios, a Calgary-based a wholesale design resource centre that serves interior designers, decorators, retail stores, architects and builders. She works side-by-side with her father, David, who is the president of the company.
Every business faces obstacles, but there are some that only family businesses can appreciate. In this series 50 years, we scour the country in search of family businesses that have stood the test of time and ask them to share the keys to their success.
Like her mother before her, Jordan Fordyce had no intention of working in the business her grandparents had started in the 1960s. She holds degrees in psychology and law, but after she was hired by a national firm three years ago, she realized her future was not in the legal world.
Today, Ms. Fordyce is CEO of Stewart Drummond Studios, a Calgary-based a wholesale design resource centre that serves interior designers, decorators, retail stores, architects and builders, working side-by-side with her dad David, the company president, and her grandmother Audrey Liepins, the company's co-founder.
"It was one of the best decisions of my life," Ms. Fordyce says. "I put logic aside and followed my heart."
Martin Liepins, a Latvian immigrant, and his wife Audrey, started Martin's Drapery Installations from their home in 1965, serving the local design industry with window covering and custom drapery installations. The company provided the couple with a living until in the 1980s, when the economy crashed and they considered closing. But when the market picked up slightly, they decided to stay the course.
In the 1980s, the Liepins' son-in-law David Fordyce joined the company after a knee injury ended his pro football career. He had been working under Martin's tutelage for five years when Martin suddenly died. Enter the Liepins' only child – David's wife – Arlene Liepins, a model and academic.
"Mom had grown up in the industry and learned it from helping Granddad, but had pursued her own path," Mrs. Fordyce says. "When my grandfather died, mom was 30 and she and my father took over the business. My grandmother told them it needed new hands and a new energy."
They transformed business from an installation business into a wholesale design distributorship. They opened their own work room and hired seamstresses to make custom draperies and bedding and opened a showroom to displays textiles, wall coverings, Canadian artwork, drapery hardware and hard window coverings.
The client base grew from designers, decorators and retail stores to include manufacturing and upholstery shops, architectural firms and builders and business expanded beyond Alberta boundaries to Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
"My parents took it to a different level," says Ms. Fordyce.
The company name was changed to Stewart Drummond Studios, in honour of the family names of her mother's maternal grandmother and her father's paternal grandmother. Though business took a hit during the recession of 2008 and 2009, Ms. Fordyce's parents moved forward with a showroom expansion and renovation and in 2010, partnered with another Canadian family business, Gresham House Furniture, to add a line made exclusively for the design trade.
Soon after that, Ms. Fordyce, who had worked in the business as a summer student since 2000, decided to leave law behind and presented a formal application to her parents for the proposed position of project manager, much to their chagrin.
"With much reluctance, they supported me," Ms. Fordyce recalls, and she was hired. A short time later, her mother was diagnosed with colon cancer and died 11 months later.
"Because mom was so heavily involved in the business, I knew I'd have to take over management of her responsibilities," says Ms. Fordyce. "It really was a crash course. She was the management/business person, Dad was the people person and sales person. After losing mom, at first it was just a matter of keeping it going."
As their grief lifted, Ms. Fordyce and her father had a lot of candid discussions about how they wanted the business to change and develop.
"A lot of it was fuelled by what mom would want to see," Ms. Fordyce says. "I'm very lucky. I have a lot of dreams and ideas, and my dad has taken the approach of a mentor and encouraged me. It's taking the core of what my parents developed, refining it and developing it into its full potential."
Recently, Stewart Drummond moved from the location it had been at for 15 years to a new 14,000-square-foot showroom at 5836 Burbank Rd. SE in Calgary.
"We had wanted to make a change and to update to current trends," Ms. Fordyce says. "This space has the perfect layout and is much larger. It's bright, spacious and warm and clients want to spend time here. It's been a huge investment and big step for us. It's the start of a new chapter."
Ms. Fordyce says Stewart Drummond's business model is unique, as it's not just transaction-based sales, but a full-service, one-stop business offering on-site measurements, assisting designers to select soft furnishing products through to final installation.
"It's a very technical industry and can be daunting for new designers," she says.
One ongoing challenge is fluctuating currency rates, as many of Stewart Drummond's products, such as fine silk fabrics, are imported. And when the economy slows, their business feels the pinch.
"Design is ultimately a luxury and a disposable item that gets eliminated when times are tough," says Ms. Fordyce. "We have to go back to basics, look at margins, where the revenue is coming through, and become ruthless about business planning. But we realize the challenges are temporary, and we stay committed to core values such as excellent quality and customer service."
The company has eight staff members not including family members. Ms. Fordyce's grandmother Audrey, now in her 80s, still comes in every day. "She is very product savvy and has quite a following with our clientele," her granddaughter says.
Ms. Fordyce's husband, Mark Chambers, a high school math teacher and football coach, helps out as well, spending his summers marketing and distributing products for Stewart Drummond Studios, to out-of-province clients.
The immediate priority is settling into the new showroom and showcasing the lines Stewart Drummond distributes.
"The last six months was dedicated to renovating the new space and moving," says Ms. Fordyce. "The goal for the next year or two is reconnecting with the design community. We have taken on representing new high-end textile lines and want to expand to their full potential."
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