In a stunning reversal of a decision that was deemed as "irreversible" when the original announcement was made nearly a couple of weeks ago, the owners of the Isabel Bloom sculptures that are made in the Village of East Davenport announced yesterday that they made a monumental mistake and will not be closing their Davenport production facilities and moving operations to China.
As I posted in a blog from last week, the public outcry from the announcement was enormous. The decision by the three owners of Isabel Bloom, LLC was nearly unanimously panned throughout the Quad Cities. People who were longtime Isabel Bloom collectors and buyers said they'd no longer buy the concrete cast sculptures if they were made in China.
I just sort of sat back and chuckled through all of this. First of all, about the only unique feature that Isabel Bloom sculptures have is that they're made in Davenport. Secondly, they aren't really sculptures - they're poured concrete into cast molds. The tough thing is making the molds.
I thought, "Why couldn't they continue to make the molds in Davenport, them ship them over to China and use Chinese concrete?" Actually, I think that's what they were going to do. But, no, it takes special artisans to pour concrete into the molds and to extract the "sculptures" out of the casings, then sand them down by hand.
Now, a sculpture - to me - is something that you make out of your own hands. Isabel Bloom's figurines are poured concrete into a cast mold, plain and simple.
I don't understand the allure of the sculptures. Obviously, a lot of other people must feel the same way. The owners have said that sales are down 30% over the past six years and profitability has shrunk by nearly 75% during the same time.
I still maintain that it's the designs that are causing the slump in sales. I don't see much of anything Isabel Bloom makes that I would want to sit on our mantle at home. I think they need to look within themselves and come up with some fresh ideas.
So, the good news is that 50 people who were going to lose their jobs by June are now staying on board now that production won't be moving to China.
Or will it?
In an article in today's Quad City Times, Isabel Bloom's owners say that any regional expansion will still require the manufacturing of new figurines overseas. They wouldn't say which region of the U.S. the Chinese-made sculptures would be first sold in, but they said they anticipate those figurines to be on store shelves by this fall.
They said the overseas-made figurines would be "differentiated" in some way from the ones that would still be made in Davenport. Those Iowa-made sculptures would be offered in Isabel Bloom-owned stores in Davenport, Moline, West Des Moines and Naperville, as well as in other Midwestern retail outlets that have been carrying Isabel Bloom products for a number of years. But they didn't elaborate what those differences would be.
The power of the people got the owners of Isabel Bloom to reconsider their closing of the production facility in Davenport. But I have to wonder how long it will be before they begin to let the staffing numbers fall in Davenport.
Either that, or have Donna Young, the chief designer for Isabel Bloom, come up with some better - and more desirable - designs.
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