Tresa Leigh Designs lets home party guests design their own handbags and accessories.

By SUZANNE D'AMATO

“Girls just wanna have fun!” – the song lyric made famous by ‘80s pop-singer Cyndi Lauper – may have struck an “entrepreneurial” chord decades later with Gilmanton residents Tresa Livernois and Amy Hoffman, owners and creators of Tresa Leigh Designs.

Having fun is central to this direct-sales custom-made handbag and accessories company. The company’s more serious mission is “to nurture in
women self-esteem, creativity, success and awareness
of self and others,” Livernois said.

Sales primarily are generated through home parties booked by the design consultants. Guests choose from an array of brightly colored and boldly patterned fabrics, trims, closures and handles to create one-of-a-kind handbags and accessories, including change purses, cell-phone cases, jewelry bags and children’s purses.

“Women love getting together and helping each other at these parties,” Hoffman said. “The atmosphere is colorful, creative and fun!”

In addition to home parties, products by Tresa Leigh Designs may be purchased directly from the company’s Web site, www.tresaleighdesigns.com, and at a growing number of retail boutiques in New England.

Started nearly three years ago, Tresa Leigh Designs was the brainchild of Livernois, a high school art teacher and the company’s namesake, and Hoffman, who managed an auto-transmissions company with her husband.

At that time, the women had been close friends and neighbors for 15 years. (They still are, by the way.) Livernois was earning extra income by designing and sewing the colorful handbags and selling them at craft fairs.

Hoffman, who was following Livernois’ successes at the craft fairs, proposed to her friend a direct-sales business model to expand marketing and sales opportunities. The craft fairs ended when a partnership between Hoffman and Livernois was officially formed.

Today, Livernois directs the creative operations. From her home studio, she monitors inventory and distributes orders to the carefully trained New Hampshire-based seamstresses hired to sew together under exacting standards the raw materials into finished pieces.

Hoffman is the company’s marketing and sales expert. She runs the company’s office from her home, just three doors away from Livernois’ house.

Attention to detail and quality control are hallmarks of Tresa Leigh Designs. “We also hope to design our own fabrics in the future,” Livernois added.

“I can’t stay away from the beautiful colors and designs,” Hoffman said, “so I receive my ‘creative fix’ by inspecting, wrapping and shipping orders to their final destinations.”

Hoffman also hand-cuts the Plexiglas inserts, which make the handbag bottoms stable and water-resistant.

A percentage of each sale is donated to Trichotillomania Learning Center (www.trich.org). This California-based charity supports awareness of and research for trichotillomania, a little-known disorder involving repetitive hair-pulling that affects mostly girls and women.

With their business carefully structured to accomplish their mission statement and grow, Livernois and Hoffman are finding that, similar to their customers, they, too, are having fun.

Suzanne D’Amato is a freelance writer who lives in Bedford.