Transcript of CS#89: Mary Jane Tomasino Christie Helene First Communion Dresses

Transcript of Interview with Mary Jane Tomasino about Christie Helene First Communion Dresses. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

First Communion Dresses are available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-catalog/1666/first-communion-dresses/

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Chris Cash: And today in the spotlight, we have Mary Jane Tomasino. She is the founder, owner, and president of Christie Helene first communion dresses and baptismal gowns and all sorts of fun stuff. Mary Jane, welcome!

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yes, hi, how are you?

Chris Cash: Well, I’m doing pretty good today other than the fact that I am completely snowed in so by the time this show comes out, that will be all a thing of the past, I’m sure but for today, it’s going to be a snow day.

Mary Jane Tomasino: For us too, it’s sloppy out there in New York.

Chris Cash: Well, Mary Jane, I know that our listeners talking about gowns and dresses may not be the most exciting thing in the world, but I think your story is just very interesting and compelling about how you got into this industry and where you have taken it in the last, has it been 18 years?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Just about, yeah, I think we’re in our 18th year.

Chris Cash: So why don’t you share with us just a little bit about the history and background of how you started Christine Helene as a company?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Well my background is in custom design. I graduated from the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, a prestigious high school and FIT, and I worked as sketch artist for a bridal manufacturer many years ago, I won’t say the year. The market was funny, I became a buyer for ladies’ sportswear and naturally I was raising my children so I always worked part time such had retail stores I worked with and then I had after let’s see my children are…the last two have 13 years apart so I had my last child and I went out there to see what was going on with christenings and I didn’t like them. I didn’t like what was available so I said, “They didn’t make *** [00:02:30], I had someone else like *** [00:02:33] did make it because I didn’t make it myself and then after that I saw that there really wasn’t much out there stylish. There were the routine christenings and it just wasn’t to me as a designer so I started making christening gowns and my little one, Christie who the company is named after would be in her playpen while I would be sewing, at the time, and working with…actually my housekeeper, I need to tell her, “Don’t clean, we’re going to sew.”

And we would make dresses for some neighborhood people and it was good, it was good. They liked it. People liked our dresses. We didn’t make a lot, just enough for a little *** [00:03:16] and we took it from there so one of the stores that had seen some of our dresses said, “You know, you really should go into a show, a trade show at the *** [00:03:26].” That’s my phone but don’t listen to that. And we went in, took a very small booth which at the time was about $900. It’s very interesting that the booths now are about $20,000. And we sold about oh, eight or nine thousand dollars worth of dresses. We were in shock! And we took it from there. We only did christening at the time, strictly christening dresses. So from christening as we went into the stores, they’d tell us these dresses, it’s so pretty, you should really do communion. But we were nervous. It was only two of us. How are we going to do this? So we put an ad in the paper and a couple of the girls that started to work with me which they’re still with me, we were working in my house and we would work either in the back where I have a little studio or on my dining room table if I had to cook, at the time. So we would start making dresses and it just took off from there and we were there for seven years working in the house and we couldn’t do it anymore because we just outgrew the demands…

Chris Cash: How did your family feel about the house being full of all dresses and stuff?

Mary Jane Tomasino: It was terrible. It was terrible. My son who was living at home at the time, who’s in college, actually before he went to college, used to tell me, “I can’t take these people in the house.” We took over the basement at one point because then I think we were probably up to about 12 or 15 girls before we moved out.

Chris Cash: That’s a lot of people in the house.

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah, it was a mess too because every night when we moved to the basement, that was just okay. We just cleaned up and we left it but when we were upstairs working…actually we worked…what we found out, I was working on my daughter’s Fischer Price table. We had a little sewing machine. We were running out of space and it was pretty comical because when it was time to pick up the kids at school, we would pick them, bring them back to the house. At one point, we designated one girl just to watch the kids in the pool because it was so hot and the kids were begging us to go in the pool but we still had work to get out. So that’s that. We knew that couldn’t last very long.

Chris Cash: What was your housekeeper even able to find anything to clean at that point?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah, well, you know, the house was big which was a good thing. We have a five bedroom Dutch colonial and we have nice big piece of property so the kids would be running and fighting but that was only after 3 o’clock. We’d only work about an hour after that. We always called it quits a little early. We’d start as soon as they went off to school. There were times I was probably in the same *** [00:05:58] that I feel asleep in. we went right to work when we started. We were very, very, very involved and passionate about our dresses. And we’ve seen a lot with the people that we worked with over the years. We became very close to our retailers. Some of them actually…I’ve gone to their children’s weddings and vice-versa, they’ve come to mine. We became very, very close over the years. People in the close by retailers but some of the ones that are out of state. We’ve broadened our base. I think we have about 75 retail stores now that we deal with. Customer services was always a very big part and my sales people are with me for many, many years. I think Susan is with 15, 16 years now. She has…it’s really almost like her business and she’s very, very close with accounts and one-on-one and that’s what we have developed with our clients. So what happened after that…

Chris Cash: Now catholiccompany.com is now one of your newest clients.

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yes, it’s very exciting, very exciting. We actually have a nice base of Catholic retailers that we deal with so we’re excited about that because it is for a special sacrament. We can’t neglect that in looking at design. We also have to realize what it’s about and we do tell that to people occasionally when they get a little crazy and tell them to slow down. This is for a special sacrament and that’s why we making these dresses. We’re not making this to be only fashion items. This is about the sacrament too.

Chris Cash: So what’s the weirdest design you’ve been asked to do?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Oh, you have no idea.

Chris Cash: Of course I have no idea. That’s why I’m…

Mary Jane Tomasino: [Laughter]. We have had people request long trains, and that’s minor…a lot of feathers and marabou which we’ve done, we’ve done tastefully. If a design is not tasteful, and when it’s requested on our couture line, that’s where put our foot down. We won’t do something that’s…I mean sometimes, they go over the top. There is a limit to how much a small child can carry on their body. But we’ve handled. Some people, you know what? People don’t realize that as a designer, we’re almost like carpenters. We can put it together but some things cannot be done. They just don’t work on a child’s body. There’s the mechanics of a child’s body so you can’t put something on them that they can’t carry. So we’re pretty convincing. We can convince someone that they can’t have something if it’s not doable. So that’s not usually an issue. My girls are pretty strong and so am I so…if something isn’t going to work or look good, because we specialize also in children that are heavy set. You know, all sizes…children do come in all sizes. There’s no one cookie cutter. So if someone is…a child is and can be very heavy, we will explain to them what we think the child should be wearing and what would be the most flattering and then they could take it from there. I can’t demand it but I can stress it. So that’s an important feature. And yeah, so then after that house issue, we left here after seven years. We took a nice space but we grew out of that in a year. And we moved on to the space where we are now which is a nice sized loft in an older building. We have a nice little showroom in there and we do the shows. We go to the trade shows. We take…our last booth was 45 feet long. That’s the amount of products that we have. So we have now broadened our base tremendously, picking up business. The biggest year for us, we picked up many new stores and we’re very excited because we also picked up a wonderful client in Ireland and we are now shipping to a store in Germany. So that’s a huge thrill for us to have broadened our base that far.

Chris Cash: Now part of your growth has also been to start using some factories in China. You want to talk a little about how you got into doing the Chinese market as well how you maintain good working conditions for those who are over there?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Well what happened with China was a unique story because they somewhat find you but when we were doing the shows over the years, apparently they’re sending people looking to see what they can do for you and it was becoming apparent that we could not take care of the need for beautiful dresses with just American labor. American labor is very expensive and it’s between everything. Not only the laborer but the ridiculous cost of just surviving especially in New York City where we are was making our dresses prohibitive no matter how simple we design them. We just couldn’t make them cost efficient to sell. So someone told me once, well you’re too small to go to a factory in China. They’ll never take on the amount of work you want to give them, let’s say 200 dresses or 300 dresses and I thought okay. However, at one of the shows, I was approached by a very lovely woman who happens to live in New York and owned factories in China and she started making my designs, very small. I think my first order was 150 pieces and we were very impressed with her work. We worked with her for a few seasons and then I guess, I found other people so I was working other factories but eventually we all came back to her. We have three factories we work with, all of whom have come to see me here, work my designs from beginning to end. I worked with actually like people who worked with the owners of the factories so they’re somewhat my agent and their agent and we worked every little detail. I send my sketches to them. I send my fabric. We check everything through for…from the smallest detail from the buttons down and we are on a very friendly basis. I’ve been invited to their homes; however, as I’ve told you before, I’m not much of a flyer especially on an 18-hour flight but I know that the conditions are good because I have requested pictures of their factories. I have spoken to their managers there and I know that they’re very well taken care of. And they’re very, very…it’s funny because they’re more…I don’t know exactly the words to use…it’s not the image that people have of them as far as the factory’s idea was…they are very easy to work with. They seem to have the same courtesy for us as we would give to them. And I’ve had absolutely no problem. I’ve been working with them now for about 7 or 8 years. And I’m very comfortable with them especially the fact that I get to speak to the owner directly because she comes to see me. She was right here in Long Island, New York and she’s back and forth and we have the same standards. So, so far, so good. I have no complaints. I feel very comfortable working with them. Should I make a trip there? Probably but someone’s got to get on the plane.

Chris Cash: I’m sure you’ll be able to make it there eventually, right?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Eventually, yeah. I think so. It’s not that I’m afraid to fly. It’s just the length of that flight just gets to me but the bottom line is, is that the world is getting smaller and they are thinking along the lines that we do. They understand the ways and the way we operate so I have no doubt that these factories…I have seen all the pictures of every factory in there. They’re clean, impeccable. They work very similar to the way we work. So far, I mean, this is the only way I could see it because there is no other way to produce the quality that our dresses have and other manufacturers and do them in this country, not unless something changes quickly.

Chris Cash: Now the dresses that you do still make in the United States, they’re the high-end…

Mary Jane Tomasino: They are the high-end, yes and they’re all custom made meaning that we make our samples and we bring them to the shows and we put them out in our showroom for our buyers to see. But let’s say, the buyer comes in and says, “You know, I really love this dress but I’d like my sample to have a sleeve on it” or “I’d like my sample to have a bigger bow” or “I would like mine to be in shantung instead of satin the way you designed it”. Fine. We’ll draw it up if we like the way it looks, we’ll make it for them and we call it their exclusive. So it becomes the exclusive design for your retail store and it’s not available to anyone else. It’s strictly for you so our base line for couture might be 25 dresses, 25 styles but then with the shoot-off that we have for all of our retailers, it could be 200 different exclusives and we track each one. We would call it your retail name would be your exclusive and that’s how we do it. So the girls have to track each and every one of each store exclusive number 1, 2, 3, et cetera and that’s the easy part and then when the orders come in, the child is measured by someone on your staff and each detail would be, “Well she likes exclusive number 1 but she does not want the bow in the back.” And each dress is cut for that child by her measurements and her details. So it’s quite a process and it’s very time consuming.

Chris Cash: I think so.

Mary Jane Tomasino: So those dresses are costly. They’re costly dresses because if I could custom kitchen is the only way I can explain it. So it’s very expensive and we do our best to keep our cost down but it’s still very time consuming. I would probably have an employee on one dress for an entire day. So right there, you could see what that could be. If you could do the math, I tell my people, do the math, you’ll see what it comes out to.

Chris Cash: Oh! Yeah, absolutely and then the material…

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah, it’s expensive.

Chris Cash: …difficult or probably very cost as well.

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah.

Chris Cash: All right.

Mary Jane Tomasino: But we can accomplish more when we make them out of the country because they make them there. They’re cut in stacks. That’s the way it’s done there. It’ cut with machines in stacks so it’s a faster process.

Chris Cash: Okay, well we’re going to take a short break to hear from our sponsor. When we come back, we will be speaking more with Mary Jane Tomasino about the Christie Helene First Communion dress line. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Mary Jane Tomasino, owner-founder and president of Christie Helene First Communion dresses, christening dresses, or I guess you could…do you usually call them First Communion dresses or First Communion gowns when you’re discussing…

Mary Jane Tomasino: Dresses, First Communion dresses.

Chris Cash: First Communion dresses.

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yes. Gowns kind of take floor length and right now, the popular length is tea length which is somewhat mid calf. That’s the look that we’re achieving for children. Although we do get requests for gowns, yes.

Chris Cash: Now, do you do more baptismal gowns or is it more baptismal dresses?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Gowns. For christenings, we do…for baptismal we do mostly gowns. It depends. Right now, the length is…it’s long, they’re about 32 inches overall. They’re not short. We do a lot of boys. We do a lot of boys’ rompers and occasionally, we do boys’ gowns also. We do a lot of christenings.

Chris Cash: This is a little bit fascinating to me because it’s something, gowns and dresses is obviously something that I have not spent a lot of time contemplating. Maybe I should have let my wife do the interviewing.

Mary Jane Tomasino: No, the christening gowns are funny because we also specialize in taking people’s wedding gowns and making them into christening gowns for either their children or grandchildren.

Chris Cash: Oh wow! I had never heard of that.

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah, we do. Actually we get so excited. We recently did a gown. It was never preserved and it was a chantilly lace which is very fine. It had some stains all over it and she had…this woman had the gown for over 30 years and now her grandchildren, she had twin granddaughters and we meticulously put it together. It was like a jigsaw puzzle because we had to cut around all the stains. It was so exciting. It was so exciting and one of my employees was able to hand-bead the whole dress. It was very, very exciting. But we do that all the time. If anyone sent…one of our retailers sent us someone’s wedding gown, we will open it up, flatten it out, put the pattern down and that’s where I come in because that’s the part I really enjoy and we actually design the dress and I tell just do whatever you can so they can use this as an heirloom and that’s another feature that we really enjoy doing. Hard to do during communion season because that’s when we’re the busiest but when we’re out of that season, we welcome that type of work. It’s a lot of fun.

Chris Cash: I’ll bet.

Mary Jane Tomasino: And yeah, it is. It’s consuming but it’s good and the christening and you know, we even do like the little dresses for after the christening party. You know that they want to change them into something so we’ll match that up to the christening gown and we like to do dresses that have that heirloom quality to it. Some of them are more contemporary. Some of the girls like that more contemporary look but most of our dresses have that antique somewhat look to it which is somewhat our signature look. That we enjoy doing.

Chris Cash: So what are the elements that make a Christie Helene dress all the way from the low end to the high end, just special beyond what else is available?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Design. It’s all about design and appealing to people what the sense that they’d like. We try to see what look they’re trying to create and also keep it within a gown like within reason. Especially on our couture line, I said, “We discussed this. We design dresses for the mothers because they have this vision of what they want.” Most children, I think, will somewhat go along with the program and they won’t get too invested in it but the mothers are the ones that we target because we know the vision that they have. We try to use every element of design based on the bridal market. The bridal market kind of gives us a cue as to what we should be doing, the type of embroidery, the type of fabrics. Well, we try to follow that so that’s what we do. We give them a lot of designs and I can tell you one thing and you will see as you work with us, we give you a lot of customer service. It’s important. It’s very important the girls are on top of every order and they understand and so that’s been a big part of what we are. I think anyway and hope.

Chris Cash: So how often do you change the designs of your standard dresses?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Well what we do is we run some of the better designs into the next season but we of course, eliminate and move on with some of the others, not because they’re not good but because it’s time. So we just keep changing. Every season, I bring out a new line. Every season, no matter how small. There’s so many dresses on the line but we try to always make it fresh and new. I won’t run the same dresses year after year after year. Only like I would say like we’ll run a dress for three seasons and then we move it on and then we’ll run it…the other overlapping will run for three seasons and then move it on. But we get bored very easily. My design staff is always on top of it, looking for new trends and new fabrics and new ideas. They’re very good, myself being the original designer, my staff has really come a long way. They can do anything. They’re great.

Chris Cash: Now do you ever pull up designs from say, ten years ago as a classic design?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Sometimes, yeah, in fact, we were recently asked to do that, to resurrect it…a dress that we had about seven years ago. So if they ask it, you know, the customer still have…we have all our notes. We keep all our notes especially for a store like say that has an exclusive. You know, they’ll me “My exclusive number 1 from the year 2002,” and we look at each other like yeah right, okay we remember that one. But we go back into their file and yes, we can resurrect it if it’s good. If we like it, you know, sure, we’ll do it for you. I get all kinds of requests.

Chris Cash: How do you come up with the naming for your dresses because you were saying earlier about how you had a lady named Angel working on the Angel dresses…

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah, well, that’s confusing. Sometimes like if you see some of the names on the christening, those are our grandchildren and children, also just a feeling like we’ll go with names sometimes and then sometimes we’ll go with as you could see on our couture line now, we’re going with cities in Europe. So we do that. And next year, who knows? I let them get as silly as they want. We can move on from cities and maybe we’ll do…I don’t know, candy flavors. It’s obviously [laughter], we try to keep ourselves interesting.

Chris Cash: The chocolate christening gown.

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah, anything. We’ve used fairy tales one year and if you look on our christenings, we have Patrick, that’s Susan’s grandson. We have a John Theodore, that’s my son. We have a Christopher, that’s my grandson. We do that. We have Christie Rose which is actually Christie but with Rose. The fact is we don’t have a Christie Helene, we have a Christie Rose and then there’s Danielle Rose which is my older daughter, like we just fool around with them just to see the staff…we poll the staff’s names and then they tell them, look my son looks more popular than yours and stuff like that. But it’s just to keep it interesting but now, if you’ve noticed, we’ve resorted to numbers because we just…there’s too many products. On some of the ready-to-wear lines, we have all numbers because it’s overwhelming. And then try to remember all those numbers. When someone calls up and asks for it, we have to go immediately to the screen but yeah, it’s a process.

Chris Cash: Now it sounds like you have a lot of fun with your staff in your factory. Do you have interesting stories to share about just fun things that happen as you’re working on the dresses?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Oh, we’ve had years of…my attitude with my employees is that if they’re happy, they work better. And we are very much friends, for our Christmas party we go to a nice restaurant that we’ve been going to every year and we play bingo. So no Christmas party and occasionally we play games during the day. We all buy lottery tickets because I tell them, “I want you to take a break every couple of hours because it’s tedious work.” So we have very much a family. Again, we’ve been together 18 years. My two cutters are with me 18 years. My salesperson is with me over 15 years. So we’ve really grown to know each other. I would love you to interview my girls because I think that they would say the same. Yeah, we have many, many stories. Customers are comical at times. There’s no question about it so we have to learn how to deal with them. We had, gosh, there’s so many stories I could tell you but there was one client in the Philadelphia area whose customer really because it seems that everybody wants their dresses so they could take pictures way before the actual communion day. So what we’ve seen a lot of is they can ruin the dresses before they even get to wear them.

So one customer really hurt her dress before she actually got to wear it. I think the mother got lipstick on it as she was putting it on and off the daughter for her pre-pictures. So when we sent the dress back, she was really nervous about getting it in time. So this was at the St. Jude Chapel in Philadelphia. She said to me, “Mary Jane, the customer went and rifled the dress off the UPS truck and was running down the avenue with this box because she was so anxious to get the dress.” I mean, the visual on that had to be great. She must have conned the UPS guy to get the dress off the box and she was running with the dress and we were laughing our heads off thinking of this woman so desperate to get the dress. We have never not missed a communion, ever, ever, ever. Because we’d rather walk the dress there if we had to but the people make us laugh because they’re so anxious when it comes to this season. So my girls get a big kick out of dealing with them. So we have all those stories to deal with. Do you know what I mean? Everyday, we’re dealing with anxious customers. We’ve become very, very close. We’ve also had a lot of sad moments where people have asked us to make dresses to bury their children and that hasn’t been the nice part of it. We’ve done that more times than I’d like to think. We’ve buried many children. It’s just a real part of what we do especially new babies. We’ve also had some great moments where we’ve made dresses for very famous people for their children. Rolling Stones, we’ve made Keith Richards’ kids and a couple of exciting ball players that we know of in Jersey from *** [00:39:49]. We’ve made his because he happens to live in our hometown. So we’ve…it’s been every spectrum but the most important thing that we try to do is enjoy what we do everyday. And we do, as you can tell from my conversation.

Chris Cash: Absolutely! Well, maybe I will have a chance at some point to talk to some of your ladies and…

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah, they’re with me a long time and my daughter, my oldest daughter does work for me, as you know, Danielle because I think she’s your sales rep.

Chris Cash: Now, is your housekeeper still with you?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yes. Yes.

Chris Cash: And is she cleaning the houses or working on the dresses?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Well, she’s older too. She helps me with the kids and the grandchildren. She watches one of them while Danielle is able to work a few days but she is expecting another so we…that kind of puts a hold on her for a while after she delivers. I was kind of hoping that she would take more a little bit more but…and I could work a little bit less but not really, not yet. Not yet. We have that little surprise coming in August so yeah, Danielle works two days, three days a week but she’s always on the phone. She works from the house which is interesting for her. She can answer all the emails and take over from there so you know, it’s a family affair. My husband is the bookkeeper, what else? I don’t know anything about books.

Chris Cash: Oh, so you put Tim into it too.

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah, hooked him right in. I told him, well he has his own business but he does my books. I told him, “I can design dresses. I can’t do paperwork.” So that’s how we do that.

Chris Cash: Have you ever given him a heart attack over something in the books?

Mary Jane Tomasino: No, to see us work together is quite comical because you get under each other’s skin a little bit but we’re pretty proud we could work well together.

Chris Cash: That’s awesome.

Mary Jane Tomasino: Yeah, we do. When you work, your wife is there too, so you see…

Chris Cash: Yes, ma’am, my wife and I both work out of the same office as well.

Mary Jane Tomasino: It can get trying at times, there’s no doubt about it but we make it work. And again, I guess our Christian background helps that too. We’re very Christian to each other at times.

Chris Cash: Well Mary Jane, it has been a real pleasure to have a chance to talk with you. Were there any final remarks that you wanted to make before we finish up?

Mary Jane Tomasino: Well I’m very happy that you’re on board with us now and I hope anyone who does have a daughter making First Holy Communion, it’s a wonderful sacrament, enjoys and God bless the children and we’re happy and excited to see people enjoying our dress.

Chris Cash: Well, you have a great day, Mary Jane. For you out there in our listening audience, please go on over to PodcastAlley and vote for us so that we can get some more listeners in on the show. Also leave us some positive reviews over on iTunes and Mary Jane, thank you much. Have a great day and God bless.

Mary Jane Tomasino: Thank you, you too.

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Transcript of Interview with Mary Jane Tomasino about Christie Helene First Communion Dresses. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

First Communion Dresses are available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-catalog/1666/first-communion-dresses/