Working Girls Land Deals

From Russ Berrie U.S. Gift comes key rings, mugs, magnets and additional giftware items. "Russ Berrie really embraced us," said artist Jodi Pedri. "The line features more than 20 designs and puts us into multiple product categories, such as coin purses, business card holders and wine glasses."

Working Girls' Glamour Girls will be featured on a holiday-themed line of notepads, kitchen towels, holiday napkins and paper dishes from C.R. Gibson. For the holiday line, Pedri will add velvet looks and rhinestones to her distinctive fashion illustration designs.

Pedri has designed giftware, clothing, ceramics, linens, tabletop, holiday and home décor for more than a decade. Many of the products she has created have sold out when featured on QVC. She recently joined forces with writer Tonja Steel to form Working Girls Design.

A third big launch for the design

Island Heritage, a division of the Madden Corp., liked the designs enough to sign on for a line of Las Vegas-themed souvenirs and gifts based on Pedri's designs. "We are blowing out five different lines of more than 200 products that will be sold in casinos and gift shops," said Pedri. The line will include glassware and mugs, luggage tags, magnets, tote bags and T-shirts.

As a giveaway for this year's expo, Pedri and Steel developed a slot machine app for the iPhone. "It's a really cute slot machine with shoes, chandeliers and lipsticks—it's a lot of fun," said Pedri.

The Working Girls team is looking to branch out into other categories. They are in talks with Avante Textiles about a line of kitchen textiles and pajamas. Pedri would also like to land on greeting cards and laptop skins.

Greeting cards would be a natural extension to the gift book business Pedri and Steel have been creating through their publishing division. They developed gift books on menopause, widowhood, divorce and raising teens—a collection they call "Oh $#%%" books. They are working on animating their "Hair Today, Cure Tomorrow" book on facing cancer and are partnering with the Susan G. Komen Foundation on a downloadable book.