Sisters Design Bags Full of Memories

By JENIFER D. BRAUN
STAR-LEDGER STAFF

Once upon a time, there were four blonde sisters who lived by the sea.

Erin, Kelly, Laurie and Tara grew up on sandy beaches, first in Puerto Rico, then in Florida. Finally, they lived in Cranford and summered at the Jersey Shore.

"We didn't have a lot of structure, then," Kelly O'Brien Hurley, 32, of Southborough, Mass., says wistfully. "All our time we spent at the beach."

"And while were there, we would look for sea glass," says Tara O'Brien Flanigan, 36, of Westfield. "That was the big hunt. We still all have big jars full of sea glass in our homes."

"It's treasure created out of trash, basically," says Laurie O'Brien Axford, 38, of Princeton Junction.

"So when we started our company, we knew it had to incorporate our love of the beach. And Seaglass just made sense," says Erin O'Brien, 25, of Hoboken.

The four O'Brien sisters, one senses, tell a lot of stories this way - finishing each other sentences, one picking up the tale where another leaves off. Sitting in the sun in Tara's backyard, chatting while their children (eight altogether, and Kelly has another on the way) gambol around them, they make a most unusual corporation.

The Seaglass Collection, the sisters' handbag company, is doing remarkably well for a brand-new concern. The company has doubled its store accounts since the sisters launched it at retail early last year, and many of its limited-edition bags have sold out.

"People can't believe four sisters could work together and enjoy it, but we do," Laurie says. It's easy to see why the bags are popular. Bright and whimsical, embroidered with martini glasses and beach balls and sequins, each looks like a tropical vacation you can carry in your hand. Each of the 17 styles is named for a beach, from Kenya's Mombasa to Florida's Key West, and each reflects that beach's style - the Mombasa bag, for example, boasts a zebra print.

Each bag comes with a little envelope filled with sea glass - fragments of broken glass bottles, dropped into the ocean and pounded by the surf into frosted-looking nuggets. The sisters themselves fill each envelope. Not only are all the members of the company sisters, but they all work from their homes when they're not tending their kids. (Only Erin, who still works in retail, is neither married nor a mom.) They run the company through e-mails and phone calls.

"And once a week we do a conference call with all of us - after 8 p.m., which is when the kids go to bed - so we can figure out our goals for the next week," Tara says.

The work makes good use of all their pre-mom skills - Kelly worked in sales (although not for a fashion company), and so did Laurie, who also lived in Shanghai and saw the kind of hand-finished textile work that could be done in Asian factories. Erin brings her experience at fashion retail, and Tara, the designer, is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology.

The bags all feature hand beading and embroidery, each made in limited numbers in factories in Asia. All the other tasks of running the company, from sales to quality control, are done by the sisters.

"My husband was skeptical," Kelly says. "But when we showed people the first bags that Tara designed, they went crazy. I sold 40 in one day at a First Communion party."

Such positive feedback continues as the sisters work as walking billboards for their line.

"I was at a bar with my boyfriend," Erin says, "and I was attacked three different times by women wanting to know where I got my bag...within about 45 minutes.

I don't know why that still surprises me, because I must get stopped and asked about my bags at least once a day on the bus." The bags all scream cute and sassy, from the cotton ones with wooden handles splashed with a giant embroidered hibiscus flower, to the tiny totes studded all over with sequined lobsters.

Images of hula dancers are a recurring theme, an homage to their late father's practice of singing a particular song as his little girls jumped out of the bath wrapped in towels. (The sisters' mother, still lives in Cranford.)

"Oh, here's to TA-ra!" Tara sings out.

"And the way she does the hula dance!" the other three sisters chime in.

The sisters are planning to branch out into diaper bags, bags for toting wine to BYOB restaurants, and other variations on the handbag theme. So far, they've introduced bridal handbags with the words "I Love You" stitched on them in many languages.

Don't look for the bags, which range in price from $80 to $165, in department stores, at least not yet. "We like being in small boutiques, we want to keep things manageable. We don't want to grow so large we compromise what we're all about," Laurie says.

The Seaglass Collection can be found at Anthology in Westfield, Jude's in Cranford, Down to Earth in Hoboken, Hedy Shepard in Princeton, Leapin' Lizards in Ridgewood, Memory Shoppe in Bay Head, The Mod Hatter in Beach Haven, Paradise in Morristown, Pink Pony Limited in Spring Lake, Talk of the Walk in Atlantic City, and Willow Street in Summit.