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The Story Behind The Brand

Melissa Gitelman starts her days like most busy mothers: dropping her kids off at school, grabbing a cup of coffee at a local coffee shop and running some errands. But that’s only the beginning. When she gets home, she settles into her office to run the successful business she started in 1999 with a line of t-shirts. In just over three years, Gitelman has nurtured The Girls™ - a series of stylized female figures, each illustrating a passion or pastime - into a successful brand encompassing everything from kitchen textiles to jewellery.

Each Girl, whether it’s Cafe Girl, Shopping Girl or Yoga Girl, to name just a few, has a personality women can relate to.

“We have found that women want to find a smarter balance in their lives,” says Gitelman. “Ten years ago, they might have said, ‘I’m a lawyer and I work 75 hours a week.’ Now they say, ‘I work four days a week and on Fridays I take yoga.’ It’s about figuring out what’s important to you.
The idea for The Girls™ came to Gitelman at a time when she wanted to make some changes in her life. With an upper management job in product development at national retailer Talbot’s, she was busy with constant travel and the other demands that come with a corporate career. But when kids came along, her priorities changed. She decided to scale down, which meant taking a lesser position with the same company. Her new position left her unfulfilled.

“I started to feel that working full-time in an office was an old way of doing things. Like a lot of women, I wanted to build a life that balanced work and home, and I realized no one was going to do it for me,” Gitelman says. “Every time I read an article about an entrepreneur, I thought, ‘I want to do that!’”
When Gitelman came up with Shopping Girl, her friends loved it and she knew she was onto something. She left her corporate job and started her business, The T Company, launching her first t-shirt line at a New York trade show. This led to requests for more designs and more products featuring The Girls™. With the help of her brand management firm, MHS Licensing, more than 60 Girls are now available and sold in spas, boutiques, resorts and better department stores on a wide range of products including stationery, accessories, tabletop items, and gifts.

“It has been so rewarding to see women relate so readily to The Girls™,” says Gitelman. “This started out as just a cute idea, and now it is a recognized brand. It has taken a lot of work but I love what I am doing!”

Visit the Collectible World Studios The Girls web site