A few years back, Thomas Bata, the shoe king, held out a gleaming piece of leather footwear. He regarded it with reverential awe, like a sculpted figurine by Rodin.

"Do you love shoes?" the octogenarian entrepreneur asked Jeanne Milne, one of his senior sales execs.

Milne tried her best. But spike heels and loafers failed to quicken her pulse. Instead, her passion was stirred by the smell of carpentry shops and classic hardware items from yesteryear: old hammers, ancient drill bits and her lovingly assembled collection of antique hand planes.

"They're absolutely beautiful. I love what they represent – a wonderfully creative expression," she explained.

Larry MacDougal photo, Business Edge
Jeanne Milne in her Calgary store.

Ultimately, Milne's heart won. After leaving her job as Bata's Prague-based marketing director for the Czech Republic, she returned home to Calgary and opened a new kind of urban hardware store.

The Art of Hardware, a retail/wholesale outlet a few flights up from ground level in the Sprung Building on 10th Avenue S.W., strives to be all things to all renovators.

It's a rustic yet oddly elegant space, with an up-to-the-minute product line that includes imported sinks, futuristic faucets and contemporary bathroom fixtures, as well as thousands of eye-grabbing hooks, cabinet knobs and creative accessories for home and garden.

Almost as important, the decor – unfinished hardwood floors, exposed beams and display racks of unfinished wood – creates an ambience both a snooty Mount Royal matron and Tim (The Tool Man) Taylor would appreciate.

Bonus. AH! is already turning a profit after only three years and a relatively modest initial capital investment – less than $200,000, shared by Milne and a group of private backers.

"Every year we've been in business, we've doubled our sales," she said. "We're bang on for our business plan."

Milne broke from the starting blocks at warp speed and hasn't stopped sprinting. Based on the story so far, she could write a how-to manual for other rookie retailers. "It's fine to follow your heart," she underscored the first lesson, "but you also better follow your head."

For someone with her extensive marketing background, that meant at least a year of evaluating market feasibility ("our study indicated a huge appetite for this type of product") and drafting a detailed business plan. Milne credits key friends and business contacts for keeping her on an even strategic keel.

Unusually for a startup, she and her backers first opted to pour a serious chunk of change into a high-end advertising campaign, which meant enlisting a top agency and running full-page, four-colour ads in glossy magazines.

It was an expensive strategy that cost investors almost as much as the store and its inventory put together. It was also a risk she and her people were determined to take.

Fortunately, it paid off in spades.

"We wanted to build some awareness in the target market, get our name out there," Milne recalled, and that's pretty much how things developed.

To ease the financial burden, she discovered other ways to hold down costs.

"We didn't put our money into fancy finishings. We don't have glossy walls, we didn't finish the floor . . . we made the design fit the space," she said.

"Keeping our display costs down allowed us to put more money into actual product."

Toward the end of the ad campaign, she noticed a dramatic surge in walk-in retail trade. It took somewhat longer, however, to convince wholesale customers she'd be able to stick it for the long haul.

"During the first year, the interior designers and decorators came to accept us," Milne said. "The following year the architects accepted us. We're now working with higher-end contractors and custom builders, generating relationships and building trust."

Another piece of advice she'd like to impart to rookies: choose your bank wisely.

All five of the major Canadian banks refused to extend a line of credit to Milne's business, "not without signing my life away."

To its credit, HSBC stepped forward to save the day. "They were unbelievable. They came to the store, walked through the business plan with us and right on the spot made a verbal agreement," she remembered.

With a growing client base and more than 100 European and U.S. suppliers on board, the act is doing so well that Milne and her advisers are planning to take it on the road.

By fall of 2004, they hope to place an Art of Hardware in downtown Edmonton. After that? Perhaps Regina, Saskatoon or the B.C. Interior.

The shoe king himself couldn't have made a better first impression.