Mary Engelbreit

Mary Engelbreit: Artist & Entrepreneur

With a range of licensed products that stretches from cards and calendars to dinnerware and fabric, a successful retail store in her hometown, an award-winning magazine, more than 150 book titles published and hundreds of millions of greeting cards sold, the most apt description of artist Mary Engelbreit may be a line pulled from one of her well-known greeting card designs - she truly is "The Queen of Everything." Mary's unmistakable illustration style, imbued with spirited wit and nostalgic warmth, has won her fans the world over. PEOPLE magazine dubbed her a Norman Rockwell for our times.

An entire industry has indeed grown up around Mary Engelbreit, but it all began with a young girl who just wanted to draw pictures. Mary moved into her first "studio," a hastily vacated linen closet in the St. Louis home where she grew up, when she was just 11 years old. "We jammed a desk and chair in there, and I'm sure it was 110 degrees," she remembers. "But I would happily sit in that closet for hours at a time and draw pictures."

Mary's passion and dedication to her drawing has never wavered, and although her company now employs a small staff that "reformats" her art to make it appropriate for a myriad of licensed products, Mary herself still imagines every concept in her head and draws every original illustration with her hand.

Mary is an incredibly prolific artist. She estimates that she has completed more than 4,000 illustrations since beginning her professional career. Her art springs from real life, and real life, she is quick to point out, just keeps happening. While there's clearly a contemporary aspect to Mary's work, a key to her enduring popularity is surely the nostalgic quality that pervades it. Mary's art echoes a simpler time for at least two reasons: for one, she has an excellent memory for the details of her childhood, and secondly, she grew up imitating the illustrations in the vintage storybooks that her mother had retained from her own childhood. Thus, Mary virtually apprenticed herself to such master children's illustrators as Johnny Gruelle (the creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy) and Jessie Wilcox Smith.

In true storybook fashion, Mary's road to becoming a professional illustrator was full of unexpected twists and turns. She went to work directly out of high school at an art supply store in St. Louis. Over the next few years she worked for a small ad agency, accepted free-lance projects on the side, held independent showings of her own art, and even worked for a short time as an editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In these early years, Mary learned a lot and managed to make a modest living, but she wasn't satisfied "drawing to order" for free-lance clients. She knew that she did her best work when it was coming from her own head. What she truly wanted was to be a children's book illustrator.

In 1977, newly wed and with enthusiastic encouragement from her husband, Phil Delano, she took her portfolio to New York City to try her luck at some well-known publishing houses. She received a "mild reception" from publishers and a suggestion from one art director that she try her hand illustrating greeting cards. "I was kind of crushed at the time," she recalls. "It seemed like a real come-down from illustrating books." But soon enough, Mary realized that the suggestion had merit. She found that the greeting card format played well into her style of illustration. Within months, she'd made her first licensing deal by selling three card designs for $150 and signed a short-term contract with another greeting card company.

Once Mary shifted her talent and energy to greeting cards, success came quickly. Several well-known card companies bought her designs, and sales were brisk. But she soon grew frustrated with the slow pace and lack of imagination exhibited by the card companies. In 1983, she began producing and designing her own cards. At the time, she was eight months pregnant. She shrugs off the risky move with a typical homespun Mary-ism: "Proper timing is overrated," she says. "There's always a reason not to do things - it's too expensive, or it's not the best time, or this, or that - but I believe there are wonderful opportunities sailing by, and you have to be ready to grab them."

Mary Engelbreit has been grasping opportunities ever since. As her greeting card line grew in size and popularity, it drew attention from other companies who were anxious to license Mary's distinctive artwork on a wide range of products, including calendars, T-shirts, mugs, gift books, rubber stamps, ceramic figurines and more. By 1986, Mary Engelbreit greeting cards had blossomed into a million-dollar-a-year business. She decided to license her cards to Sunrise Publications to free up more time for her art and to grow her business in other areas. In 1995, she brought on Greg Hoffmann, long-time friend and legal counsel, as CEO to run the business. Mary Engelbreit Studios now has contracts with dozens of manufacturers, who have produced more than 6,500 products in all.

Although the range of Mary Engelbreit licensed product has continued to grow robustly, Mary and her staff are careful to make sure the growth is smart and deliberate as well. They take extreme care in choosing only the best companies to work with and go to great lengths to make certain that Mary's artwork is reproduced as faithfully to her original work as possible.

In the fall of 1996, Mary took on what was probably her most ambitious project to date. She launched a national consumer magazine, Mary Engelbreit's HOME COMPANION. The home décor and creative lifestyle magazine reflects Mary's personal decorating vision and showcases the homes of fellow artists. Each issue also covers topics including family life, food, decorating, craft projects, flea markets and collectibles. The magazine has won several prestigious awards and currently enjoys a circulation of more than half a million, with a readership of 1.5 million.

In 2001, Mary saw her original dream come true when she signed a contract to illustrate children's books for publishing giant HarperCollins. Her debut book, "The Night Before Christmas," spent 11 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Her art truly came to life in 2004 with the release of her first animated video based on The Night Before Christmas.

Over the years, Mary Engelbreit has shared her good fortune with a range of charitable organizations and worthy causes close to her heart. An avid reader, Mary has always been dedicated to the promotion of literacy. In 2000, Mary launched a partnership with First Book, a nonprofit organization that delivers new books to low-income children. Her contribution of a commemorative poster for the organization's Make a Difference Day event was a key factor in enabling them to deliver 2 million books to literacy groups for low-income children in 2000.

Today, Mary Engelbreit Studios, The Mary Engelbreit Store and Mary Engelbreit's HOME COMPANION magazine are headquartered in Mary's hometown, St. Louis, MO. Thousands of retailers nationally and internationally sell Mary Engelbreit products, spreading what the Wall Street Journal coined a "vast empire of cuteness." Total retail sales near $100 million annually.

It's an amazing degree of success for any company, but even more remarkable considering that it all began with a single-minded young girl who decided at age 11 that she was going to be an artist. And while Mary Engelbreit Studios has grown into a global licensing and retail business, that same girl still sits at its core, grown up now, but still drawing her pictures with the same sense of wonder, imagination and enthusiasm.