Purebreds All : Even Hearts of Stone Can’t Turn Down Firm’s Creatures

SAN DIEGO â€”  Sandy Brue is one chief executive officer who knows her animals. That is one reason why Brue’s 8-year-old company, Sandicast, rang up annual sales of more than $10 million in 1988.

Brue links her company’s success to attention to detail. She makes sure that a decorative “cast stone� animal sculpture looks like the real thing. So a Sandicast figure, whether it’s a Samoyed, a Rottweiler, a sharpei, or a golden retriever, will look like the real McCoy, or at least the real McPup.

Sandicast’s stone menagerie includes cats and wild animals, ranging from raccoons to baby harp seals. But the company’s line of dogs has been the biggest seller. Ranging in size from 3 inches long and 2 inches high to a foot long and 9 inches high, the canine sculptures retail from $10 to $100.

‘It’s Very Classy’

“It’s not just the product,� said Mifi Grosso of Just Animals in the Bazaar del Mundo. “The whole operation--it’s very classy. She (Brue) promotes from within, encourages people to be innovative. She engenders loyalty from the people who work with her.�

The result is that “we’re right where we want to be� in the gift industry, says Brue, a petite woman of Italian-American ancestry who is the company president. Brue won’t discuss figures other than to say that sales are “in the double-digit millions.�

Sandicast is not one of the giants of the sprawling gift industry, according to Brue. But her firm has carved out a strong position in the decorative animal sculptures market.

“Her company is probably the single largest gift company making dogs and cats,� said Bob Stansfield, a part owner of six Tinder Box gift and tobacco shops in several states. He describes Sandicast as “simply a phenomenal gift line.�

A careful, discreet chief executive, Brue learned her managerial skills on the job. On the face of it, Brue, an artist by calling, is an unlikely candidate to be president of a privately held, multimillion-dollar corporation. She has no MBA. In fact, Brue, who is a native San Diegan, never finished her undergraduate schooling (the University of San Diego and San Diego State), leaving to have a family.

Until Sandicast, she devoted her energy to being a mother of four, a free-lance artist and an inveterate volunteer for such groups as the Children’s Home Society.

“I’ve been in charge of more decorating committees than I care to say,� she recalled. “I was always artistic. People would say, ‘You should be doing something.’ �

In the summer of 1981, Brue took a leap of faith away from free-lance assignments such as designing business logos. She started Sandicast.

Flattered by Comments

Although flattered by a client’s comments about the lifelike quality of her animal sculptures, it wasn’t until her husband, an engineer, said that the family finances needed more help that Brue actually acted.

The Brues mortgaged their house in Rancho Santa Fe, borrowed money from relatives, and Sandy opened a “two-employee factory� with a four-item line: a bunny, a squirrel, a fawn and a cocker spaniel puppy. The puppy quickly became extremely popular.

At first Brue was her own sales force, lugging her sculptures to gift stores. Not everyone appreciated her animals. At one gift shop in La Jolla, the owner’s response to her critters was: “Can’t I get something like this in Tijuana?�

“I came close to physical violence,� Brue recalls. Then the owner forgot about Brue and left her cooling her heels in a hot stock room. After 20 minutes, the proprietor returned, listened to another presentation and advised her: “Dear, you should really get someone else to sell them.� However, the woman made an order and is still a Sandicast customer.

Describing herself as a “strong, opinionated person� Brue does not give in to rejection.

“I think people just give up way too early,� she says. “The minute they get their first no, they say, ‘well I did my part.’ The one thing I got from my mother was not to give up, to try another angle.�

She has also received a great deal of support from her husband, Bob, an electrical engineer who kept Sandicast’s books part time, before becoming full-time controller after the first year and a half. Now Bob Brue is backing off from the operations of Sandicast to handle the family’s investments.

“I know a number of women who could be as successful, but their husband would not allow that,� Brue said. “It would cause problems in their married life. I was lucky and married an ‘80s man in the ‘60s.�

Brue started a practice in 1982 of bringing out 10 or so new pieces twice a year. Then came an unexpected boost. About six or seven months after starting Sandicast, a Canadian distributor of gift products who had seen one of Brue’s sculptures in a Carmel shop, tracked her down to her then-small factory.

Brue was kneeling, wrapping her samples in Pampers when the distributor arrived. The small-time operation belied the product quality that had drawn the distributor. Although the first sales to Canada were small and not very profitable, Brue learned about exporting and was encouraged to learn that people in other countries liked her product.

Rapid growth was not long in coming.

Sales Continued to Grow

“Early on I remember my husband asking, ‘How big do you want this to get?,’ � Brue said. She thought maybe $2 million. “That came and went so fast that I realized it wasn’t that much harder to be larger.�

By the end of 1983, Sales had reached $3.5 million. Today the company employs more than 200 at its 40,000-square-foot factory headquarters off Miramar Road, which also turns out a new line of cast wall decorations.

As president and resident artist, Brue still sculpts in clay and casts each model in Sandicast’s line of more than 200 decorative animals. One of the big attractions of a Sandicast figure is that seemingly every hair of an animal’s coat has been etched in.

Brue works from live models. To get the proportions right, so that a beagle’s muzzle does not look like a cocker spaniel’s, she visits breeders to view champions or the San Diego Zoo for wild animals.

The result is that Sandicast’s sculptures are recognized by animal lovers the world over for their fidelity to living creatures. Sandicast products are sold in about 20 countries, including Canada, Japan and many European countries.

“They are so realistic,� said Toni Martinez, a sales clerk at Safari Animal Collection in Seaport Village. “That’s why they sell so well. We get an order every week for one of the Sandicast pieces. We usually get an order every month for the other brands. In particular, her dogs have done so well.�

Although the retail market in general is in a slump, Brue says that Sandicast sales are up 26% above 1988 and that this year she added a line of mid-size products and a second factory shift.

Brue distributes the animal sculptures through a selected group of manufacturers’ representatives who work on commission rather than through a chain of stores. The reps are chosen by her because of the complimentary products of other manufacturers that they represent.

A key to Sandicast’s success, Brue acknowledged, is the placement of the product in better gift stores and in ensuring that those stores are not too close to each other.