How many men out there have ever heard their significant other say "You're just not that romantic"? Of course, it's not that you don't enjoy being romantic, it's just that, well, life is hectic, and you have trouble coming up with fresh new ideas for romance.
That's where Mary Chatman comes in. In 2002, the Suwanee resident surprised her husband on his birthday.
"I did a full decorating job at my house for my husband's birthday, and when he came home from work he had candles and rose petals and all kinds of stuff waiting for him," she says. "I was really just looking for something other than just going out for dinner or seeing a movie. I turned our living room into this exotic place where we could have a candlelight dinner."
An entrepreneurial idea was born.
"My sister came over and saw it and just said ‘Wow, where did you get this idea from?' and was amazed, so that kind of gave me the idea of doing this as a business," Chatman says.
She was ready for a career change.
"I was at the end of my desire to be in corporate America and that was the turning point for me," Chatman says. "I would talk to people about romance and ask them about what they do for romance, and I found that most people would like to do it but don't have the time to put it together or just didn't have a clue about how to go about doing it."
So in 2002 Chatman formed Creations of Love, Inc. to provide customers with "romance packages" they can custom order. Typically that means Chatman will make a visit to a home or hotel room and decorate it with candles, music, special bath soaps and even custom-made pillow cases. The idea, she says, is that clients get to enjoy the romantic ambiance without the hassle of doing the legwork themselves.
Chatman's company is now celebrating its sixth year and is expanding its "romantic decorating services" to New York and Los Angeles (for this, Chatman uses contractors who perform the on-site work).
"When we decorate at someone's home, what they usually do is go out for dinner or to some kind of event, and what happens is they'll have a family member meet us back at the home and give us an hour or so, on average, to decorate on average," she says.
The key to her company's success, Chatman says, is an ability to combine her own sense of what products and services work with a willingness to listen to what individual customers want. In fact, while some things like bubble baths, champagne on ice and candles are extremely popular, Creations of Love has to keep up with the trends. Recently, there have been a lot of requests for interesting food spreads such as selections of gourmet cheeses.
"Our web designer is actually looking into setting me up with software so that I can update the website myself. That's how often our menu of services changes," she says.
Chatman has provided decorations for events such as wedding proposals, wedding nights, anniversaries and even celebrations of work promotions.
"We had one guy on leave from Iraq, who arranged for our services because he wanted to do something special for his wife while he was back," she says. "That felt really good."
