Qby. grad, RPI scientist now is ‘Elf’ making ornaments at Shirt Factory

By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor

Stephanie Guzik-Lendrum went from lab-coated biophysicist-biochemist to self-described “Christmas elf.”

The 2001 Queensbury grad earned her bachelor’s degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and then her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina in cell and development biology.

She came back to work at RPI, but in 2018 she left abruptly, after what she describes as uncomfortable fallout from an equipment failure. It led her to parlay her hobby — painting glass ornaments as gifts for loved ones — into a business.

The result? Cedar + Pearl, producing hand-made wooden and glass Christmas ornaments and souvenirs. It’s based now at the Shirt Factory in Glens Falls.

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“Go big or go home,” Mrs. Guzik-Lendrum said was her motto from the start.

Days after leaving the RPI lab, she emailed Yellowstone National Park, where she and her family had gone a year earlier. She sent the email “out of the blue” through a Web contact form. “Within 20 minutes I had a reply from the buyer for Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain and Grand Canyon,” she says.

“I painted up some designs and sent them to her that day. The next week, we were talking pricing. A few weeks later, I had an order for 700 ornaments due in March.” This was October. She says she started painting, and delivered on-time.
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“In the world of science, I was maintaining a lab. I was training students, and I loved it. I thought it was so much fun to work with the bright minds of our area, getting to interact with them every day.

“When I lost that, I felt like I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next. I did apply for a handful of science jobs, but at the same time, I was thinking about this pivot…The idea was, let’s try it for a year. If it doesn’t work, well then, I’ve had an adventure for a year, and we’ll just get out of it whatever we can.

“If I hadn’t made that shift, I would still be in a lab and I’d still be training students, but it wouldn’t have the same glow about it. What I do now is just pure joy.”

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What began as one woman working at home now employs eight to 12 part-time artists — all women, it happens.

“I joke that we probably are as close to elves as you possibly could be,” she says.

“We make Christmas ornaments all year. It feels like a Hallmark Christmas movie: Big-city scientist leaves her job and starts an ornament company with her friends. We joke about, we’re always covered in glitter. We have so much fun.

“We randomly sing together, sometimes 80s music and sometimes Christmas songs, and we survive on cookies and donuts. If you can imagine a really happy work space, that’s what we are.”

“What we create here, it’s weird, but it’s magical. People look at our ornaments and see a memory captured in time.”

Mrs. Guzik-Lendrum says the business name Cedar + Pearl “encompasses the idea of heirloom quality ornaments, ‘cedar’ being a cedar chest, and ‘pearl’ a pearl necklace. This is something you’re going to want for yourself, but also to pass it down to somebody else. There’s an emotion connected with it.”

By October of this year, they’d shipped 32,000 ornaments, not counting in-house sales at the shop and at craft shows.

That’s up from 28,000 units, total retail and wholesale last year, she says.

The Website lists 20 regional retail locations, from Lake George and Bolton to Friends Lake, Old Forge, Schenectady.

Cedar + Pearl has developed custom designs for Fort William Henry, the Adirondack Balloon Festival, North Country Festival of Trees, Grant Cottage, Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts and for famed blogger Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman) — and nearly 30 other accounts across the country.

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Her two lines are hand-painted glass ornaments and laser-cut, layered shadowbox-style wooden ornaments.

“Those have really taken off,” she says. Part of the appeal, and why she added the wooden line, she said, was they’re not breakable, so better for travelers.

Mrs. Guzik-Lendrum offers 152 different designs for wooden ornaments, alone.

At first she outsourced the woodcutting, then painted and assembled herself, but demand grew, and in June 2020, she purchased two laser cutting machines, plus a third as backup.

That’s when she hired her first employees and moved into the Shirt Factory.

“I have employed many women throughout the years. We work on the school schedule. We have a very welcoming and open environment for people to work, and do something creative and fun.”

“I do all of our design work,” Mrs. Guzik-Lendrum says, some from imagination, others from photos — like the ornament that depicts her husband Eric mountain biking. (Eric Lendrum co-owns Rick’s Bike Shop with his brother Jared.)

“We have a machine operator, a team of painters, we have one assembly person, and we have a shipping department” — mostly her mom, Nancy Guzik.

Mrs. Guzik-Lendrum says, “I do a lot of things,” including painting all the glass balls, freestyle, herself.

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“I’m a numbers person, being data-driven with a science background…” she says. “I definitely had to swallow a pill in the idea of putting money toward making this happen. I was very comfortable employing myself and working from home. Suddenly needing machines and a rental space and employees was a big leap, but one I was willing to make because I already had a couple of years under my belt, knowing the demand was there.

“The machines, together, cost about the equivalent of a moderate car,” she says.

“I’ve mostly elbow-greased my way through,” Mrs. Guzik-Lendrum says, with no outside financial backing.

She cites logistical support from the Adirondack North Country Association, a farm and small business group.

“Billie Jean and Eric (the Unkaufs who own the Shirt Factory), “have been so supportive of my business,” she adds.

“I’ve been in the black every year, which I’m really proud to say.”

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Mrs. Guzik-Lendrum is also not beyond whimsey, naming her three cutting machines “Maude,” “Mabel” and “Blanche.”

“They’re three hard-working ladies in the Shirt Factory,” she says, noting that her grandmother worked in the original Shirt Factory “with all of her sisters-in-law, so it’s come full circle.”

Come January, she’s moving manufacturing to the Grey Ghost building across Lawrence Street, growing from 800 to 2,300 square feet. She plans to purchase two more laser machines.

She’ll keep her current Shirt Factory location as a showroom and for retail sales.

“I don’t know where this is going,” Mrs. Guzik-Lendrum says. “I feel like I’m the steward, more than the owner of the business. I’m a piece of it, but it kind of has a mind and a direction of its own.”

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