Madison Originals Magazine Madison Originals Magazine February 2012 | Page 13
MadisonOriginalsMagazine.com | 13 opened Playthings in May 1986 at the
Northgate Shopping Center.
With help from her siblings�sister
Alice, who has retail ownership
experience and an art background, and
brother Skip, a very talented artist who
designed the logo which she still uses
today�Nancy made it through the rst
year. �I asked Skip to create a logo that
said fun, entertaining, and educational.
He created the jack-in-the-box with the
drama faces on the front, peering into a
microscope. The tagline we use is �toys
to entertain, educate, and fascinate.��When second son, Trevor, was born in 1987, Nancy now had two little test marketers to try out the toys. One of the selections was a grow-a-frog kit which Nancy ordered when Spencer was in rst grade. �The directions said that the frogs could live to be 15 years old, and my husband and I joked that Spencer would be graduating from college by that time. Well, guess what, he graduated, and we still had the frog!�Nancy originally wanted to open her shop at Hilldale, but at that time space rarely became available. In 1994, a small 750-square-foot space opened up so Nancy moved. She jumped when the opportunity arose to knock down a wall from a vacant space next door to create a larger store. And, �When Hilldale renovated, we moved further down the west wing to a space more than double what we had, and ended up knocking a wall down for a total of 5,000 square feet.� Then when Joseph Freed, a development company, bought Hilldale and began renovations again, Nancy moved the store to the south end of the mall to a space the same size as her old store.