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Family Businesses To Cluster At U-Haul In East Middlebury Just Off Route 7

Tuesday July 17, 2007

By Ed Barna

    Either it's one of the most complicated business stories of the summer or it's one of the most solid romances, or maybe both-but in any case, the customers will benefit. And it's not a rubber stamp story, except that it is.

    It's not unusual for Vermonters to be entrepreneurial, but even in a state where everyone seems to have something going on the side (remember those bumper stickers “MOONLIGHT IN VERMONT-OR STARVE”) Brad and Blanca Jenne stand out. After working separately for years, they are now going to combine operations at an East Middlebury location where people will be able to store their memories, scrapbook them, take them somewhere else, or] forget the problems of making choices about what to save while making choices between dozens of kinds of candy.

    To start with some directions, if you are driving along Route 7 and want to get to East Middlebury village, there are two routes (yes, we know about Cady Cross Road and the airport etc.-bear with us). You can go east on Route 125, where Route 7 bends, or a little south you can start on Route 116, again going east.

    The 116 route will bring you almost right away to a business you may remember as a combination of a U-Haul dealership and self-storage units. To anyone who has ever moved a household, this makes sense-and in fact you see the same arrangement in other places, such as Rutland on Route 7 going south.

    In the world of U-Haul, however, this is not just any dealership. After being in the top 100 in the nation three times, Brad Jenne was number one in the U.S. last May, and when interviewed was top in Vermont this year (college students moving back and forth help).

    So he's decided to add on. When the ongoing construction project on Ossie Road is done, there will be three regular storage buildings at ABC Self-Storage, LLC, plus one climate-controlled building and a new office building, to replace a trailer with 8,500 square feet of space.

    If that sounds like a lot of space for an office (8,400 is 60 x 140),  you're right. There's room for a store-in fact, for a store that will be two stores.

    Blanca Jenne has been operating Scrapbook Paradise out of their home in Cornwall since September of 2004. Now Scrapbook and Rubber Stamp Paradise will be in East Middlebury-and tucked inside will be a new enterprise, Sweet Surprises Down Candy Lane (sounds better than Ossie Road, doesn't it?).

    Scrapbooking, in case you have been on some other planet in the last five years or so, is a hugely popular activity that people enjoy before they go to paradise. Memorabilia are not merely shoved into album pages, they are accented and adorned and framed, artfully enough so that workshops on techniques will be one feature of the larger Scrapbook  Paradise space.

    Responding to demand, Jenne began the business so Addison County would have ready access to a full range of scrapbook materials. She orders from 30 suppliers, and a partial list of the products will illustrate why a new store might be necessary: special papers (school colors are grouped), ribbon, eyelets, embossing powder, stickers, silk flowers, rubber stamps, inks, and (dare we say it?) brads.

    “Just a lot of different needs you don't always think of,” she said. Putting on messages and symbols  with rubber stamps has taken off recently, thus the addition to the official store name.But how did she become an expert on sweets?Turns out Blanca Jenne worked a decade ago servicing candy accounts. Knowing the wholesale sources as she does, she will have over 100 types of candy in stock, available by the pound (so to speak).

    “We both like being entrepreneurs,” she said. Put that in as a candidate for Understatement of the Year.

    She'll be at Field Days, and the target Grand Opening date is August 18 (August 25 for Sweet Surprises).

    For more information, check out www.scrapbookparadise.net and www.middleburysweets.com.

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