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People Profile: Gloria LeBlanc

By John Flink

Coronado's own 'cowgirl' is at home in the Cays

When she left her former base of operations in Los Gatos, California, successful entrepreneur Gloria LeBlanc could have settled anywhere. But she had a short list of must-haves for her new home: small-town ambience, a waterfront location and easy access to a private club.

A friend from Carlsbad suggested Coronado, a place LeBlanc had visited several times but had never thought about living in. A good think later she found herself living her ideal small-town life in a waterfront home just steps from the Coronado Cays Yacht Club.

Sweetening the pot, LeBlanc also found reasonably priced warehouse space in Chula Vista for her internet businesses CowsCowsCows.com and WallStreetGifts.com. The building is visible across the water from her patio, and if it weren’t for the tide, she could commute by boat.

“I got everything I wanted here in Coronado,” she says today.

After graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in marketing, LeBlanc became a buyer for Bon Marche, a Seattle department store chain. She then gravitated toward Wall Street, eventually setting her sights on opening a brokerage in premier retail space in downtown Los Gatos and joining the whirl
of Silicon Valley.

It was a zoning ordinance that led LeBlanc into the gift business in 1993. The ground-floor space that she wanted for her brokerage was zoned for retail use. But the ordinance didn’t say that the entire space had to be used for retail.

“I set up some shelves in one corner of the office with some Wall Street-themed gifts like bull and bear bookends,” LeBlanc explained. “I only had 12 items. It was pretty lame, really, but I did $18,000 in the first year just from that little display. It was obvious that I was onto something.”

By 1994, WallStreetGifts.com was on the web, ably assisted by a technically inclined high school kid who designed the first website for $100. The operation grew quickly, appealing to brokerage firms interested in buying themed gifts for valued clients and outstanding employees.

Cows entered the picture in 2000. LeBlanc was prowling the Los Angeles Gift Show when she found high-
quality, miniature reproductions of the cow statues made famous by the CowParade phenomenon. Trotted out first in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1998, CowParade “udderly” exploded in popularity a year later when hundreds of artistically inspired fiberglass cows were herded onto the streets of Chicago in a summer-long experiment in public art that city officials said brought about $200 million in unexpected tourist dollars into the city.

“I bought 96 different cows and put them on the WallStreetGifts.com site because the Swiss cows used by CowParade have horns and look a little like bulls,” LeBlanc remembered. “They sold out in three days. Eventually, I spun off a new business just for the cows.”

Next up is bringing Cow Parade to San Diego. Headquartered in West Hartford, Conn., CowParade Holdings, Inc., helps local groups run CowParade events, which have been held in New York, London, Kansas City, San Antonio and other cities since the Chicago splash.

Sponsors pay about $5,000 — sponsorship costs vary — for a plain white fiberglass cow statue. Sponsors then find artists, who are paid about $1,000, to decorate the cows pretty much any way they want, as long as the result doesn’t have a blatantly commercial message.

Local Rotary clubs will be the prime movers behind a San Diego CowParade. The plan, which LeBlanc hopes to put into action by next fall, would scatter cows around San Diego County, mostly in pedestrian-friendly shopping districts where they can get the attention they deserve. You can bet there will be cows on Orange
Avenue.

The Rotary Club is in the cow game for the money. When Cow Parades are over, usually after a few months, the cows are auctioned off for charity as the pieces of art that they are. Chicago’s post-parade auction earned more than $3 million.

For Rotary, money earned at auction would go to the group's campaign to eradicate polio.

“Anything fun and vibrant like that is terrific,” said Bob Watson, the Coronado Rotarian in charge of the local polio eradication campaign. “I’m excited about CowParade because of the amount of money it has made in other cities. If we could say that in our lifetime we eradicated polio, that would be the greatest thing we could do.”

LeBlanc agrees, adding that she would eagerly sponsor a full-sized cow. After all, she has every other size cow.

“Most Californians have never seen a CowParade,” she said. “It would be something new and would raise money for a good cause. I’d love to have a role in bringing the cows to San Diego and Coronado.”


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