IF YOU GO
Backyards by Design: 14475 S. Dixie Hwy., Palmetto Bay; 305-252-5979. Hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday.Debbie Kavanaugh makes it her business to find out what's going on in other people's backyards.
She's owner/manager of Backyards by Design, a South Dade store that sells outdoor furniture and accessories with a personal twist.
''People were coming into the store in a quandary, totally clueless about what to put in their backyards,'' Kavanaugh says. ``They would say they wanted to buy some kind of outdoor furniture but they didn't know what.''
So Kavanaugh started going to their backyards with them.
Once there, she asked about their family's outdoor pursuits. After finding out their lifestyle, she advised them what to buy that would best suit their yard, their interests and their pocketbook.
Her free on-site service has proved to be a successful marketing tool.
``I have been in all kinds of backyards, small yards and big ones, from Kendall to Homestead and even over to South Beach to help a bachelor who didn't know what to put on the balcony of his condo.''
The 2,500-square-foot store is brimming with furniture, hammocks, wind chimes, stepping stones, outdoor lamps and tiki torches, plastic glasses and tableware and a myriad of garden accessories.
Large, festive patio umbrellas are open over tables and seating arrangements and colorful metal sculptures of butterflies, frogs, fish, turtles and flamingos cover the walls.
Wind chimes cost from $14 to $24. Furniture ranges from $299 for an outdoor bistro-type dining table and chairs to $1,600 for a cast aluminum set with a stone tabletop. Resin garden fairy statues are $25; a candle holder inside a lighthouse is $30 and fabric and rope hammocks cost $199.
Being owner/manager of a patio furniture store was not a career Kavanaugh had planned on. Larry Kavanaugh, her husband of 35 years, has owned Pinch A Penny pool supply in the same shopping center for 14 years. In addition to pool supplies, the store sold some patio furniture.
When her husband decided to open a separate store for the furniture, he and their two sons, Chris, co-owner of Pinch A Penny, and Kevin, who's in the Pinch A Penny sales division, kept it in the family.
''They decided to bring Mom in to run it,'' Debbie Kavanaugh recalls. That was six years ago. Since then, Kavanaugh, 54, inexperienced in furniture sales, has attended seminars and national furniture shows and developed merchandising skills so well that the store is first in furniture sales of all the Pinch A Penny Florida franchises.
She attributes her success to the free backyard visitations she makes and selling good quality furniture that's not too high-priced.
And she runs the place independently. ''My husband helps me with the assembly of some of the furniture,'' she says, ``but I'm the boss.''
