Pat Baker & Carla Baggett of Bryant
Mother-daughter business looks to the future and a third generation
Carla Baggett loves her job as junior partner at Baker Jewelry in Bryant. Yet she understands if some customers and friends think it might be a bit confining to work for someone who is a business veteran with more experience in sales and with jewelry — and that she addresses as Mom.
“Actually, we have a lot of fun,” Carla said. “Mom’s taught me a whole lot, and I had been going to market in the family business long before I became part of the business.
Pat Baker has been in the jewelry business since 1981, and she said mother and daughter have a close relationship but its all business when their store opens.
“Then our focus is on the customers and their needs,” Pat said.
“No family problems come in the door. There is never any fussing; we get along so well.”
Carla grew up around the business and has been actively involved in the store for five years. That would make her a veteran professional in some stores, but not to her mother.
“She is still in training. It will take another 10 years for her to really know the business,” Pat said. “In a small store like this, you have to do everything from
“She is still in training. It will take another 10 years for her to really know the business. In a small store like this, you have to do everything from marketing to sales to paperwork.”
marketing to sales to paperwork.”
Actually, Pat got involved with selling jewelry after two careers. She was a school secretary for 15 years.
“Then one day the World Book Encyclopedia representative came into the office and asked if anyone in
PAT BAKER
on being in business with her daughter Carla Baggett
the school would be interested in selling Childcraft (the company’s multi-volume anthology for children),” Pat said. “I said I would do it.”
The career move did not meet with a lot of encouragement at home.
“My husband said, ‘You can’t sell those books. They cost over $400 a set,’ and that just set me on fire. I sold two sets my first day, and I was an award-winning salesperson within a year.”
Pat said she sold the books to schools, libraries and families across southeast Arkansas.
After selling the books for five years, she decided to open a jewelry store in her hometown of Warren.
“I did it for the love of diamonds and all of God’s beautiful creations,” Pat said.
Then seven years ago, she moved the business to Bryant, where her daughter Carla lived and had worked as an Xray technician for 15 years. It was another unpopular move, Pat said.
“My pastor and a deacon from the church came to me and asked if I really thought I should do this,” she said. “I was 65 and I could have retired, but I told them that I knew it was what God wanted me to do.”
Carla said she was happy to join her mother at her new store in Bryant.
“I had raised my kids here and always gone to market with Mom,” she said. “She knew I would never come to Warren, so she needed to move near to me.”
Pat and Carla said there was no other jewelry store in town when Pat came to Bryant in 2005 and that the store was well received by the residents.
“Around 300 people came to our opening,” Carla said.
“The people of Bryant came out and supported us. It was awesome,” Pat said. “This business is built around reputation and trust, and we have customers who have given us that trust.”
She said that this week a customer brought then a 3.5carat diamond ring, appraised at more than $50,000, to repair and refurbish.
“For someone to trust us with something like that touched and humbled me,” Pat said. “I was almost in tears when I thought about it.”
Carla appreciates what her mother’s experience and skills have brought to her knowledge of the business. She said she can tell the torch is being passed along to her, even though her mother is still at the store every day.
“Now when it comes to the ultimate decision about the business, she leaves it for me to decide,” Carla said.
“At first she was the chief and I was just the Indian, because it is hard to have two chiefs, but she is beginning to step back.”
Carla said her mother might begin “letting go of the reins” and work only a couple of days a week after about six months. They have already found a way to give each other weekends off. The store on Office Park Drive is closed on Sunday, and Pat takes Monday off and Carla is not in on Saturdays.
The long-range plan is for Carla to also pass along the skills and knowledge, along with the store, to another generation.
“My daughter Madeline is 20 and living in Las Vegas, where she is working in a big jewelry store learning the business,” Carla said.
Her daughter is in college at the University of NevadaLas Vegas while her husband is stationed there with the U.S. Air Force.
“She will be back in less than three years,” Carla said. “When she gets back, I want to look for a free-standing store out of the strip mall and take the business to the next level.”
Pat said she will continue to be a part of the store’s future, as well as stay active in the community. She is a longtime member of the Rotary Club and is on the board of directors of the Bryant Boys and Girls Club.
Carla said if her mother reduces her time at the store, it might give them more time together just being mother and daughter.
“It’s odd; we are never able to go to lunch together,” she said. “We sometimes are able to go out to a restaurant and drink strawberry tea, and we see each other before church. About the only time we really spend time together away from the store is when we are on a trip to a market.”
“I hope I am doing this until the day I die,” Pat said. “I don’t want to go home and be old.”
Getting another generation ready to take on the business should keep both mother and daughter busy for a while longer.
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline. com.