SPECIALTY HOUSE OF CREATION was started by Mary Blakemore, a great grandmother at 63 years of age and Doug Brookins, a young man of 26 in 1971. As entrepreneurs, they pooled their life savings, renovated an old chicken coop located in a small suburb of south Jersey and started a business. After nine years of manufacturing leather novelties and advertising specialties for local businesses, we built a large manufacturing plant in Lindenwold, NJ.

  

Mary & Doug in 1971
 
click images to enlarge

Then in 1978, casinos came to Atlantic City. Within two years our reputation grew as the premier supplier of gifts and promotional items to all nine casinos. Steve Wynn’s Golden Nugget provided us with the select opportunity to sharpen our corporate expertise in the development of sophisticated promotions and high roller gifts as well as high-end gift shop merchandise. It is here that the Players Clubs started, bus marketing found its genesis and the casino industry boomed. Although Wynn’s Golden Nugget was the smallest of all the gaming properties, it was consistently the highest grossing casino in Atlantic City. The honor was ours to be invited to participate and contribute in the growth of Steve Wynn’s Golden Nugget in addition to Caesars, Tropicana, Harrah’s, Bally’s, Claridge, Sands, Resorts and Trump Plaza.

Below is a list of a few of the projects we have done.

CASINO

SHC supplies casinos all over the world… we supply gift items for their shops and for promotions. Mirage, Bally’s, Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun, Harrah’s, etc., just to name a few. We invented the hottest items in their Players Clubs for holding their club cards, i.e., the Slot Claw (Patent #D486,531), the Slot Machine Bungie Coil (Patent #D464, 998), the Lobster Claw – and many others.

Our custom Players Paks have become one of the hottest items to give away to new members as well as our newest promotion “Who Shot Percy Pound.”

TOBACCO

In 1989, we began supplying Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds with on-pack promotions. Having our own leather manufacturing plant, we produced many multi-million, on-pack promotions for such brands as Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Salem, Camel and Winston.
We also supplied Philip Morris duty-free stores worldwide.

CORPORATE

Through distributors we supply the following types of merchandise:

  • NRA – military belts with custom military buckles.
  • Crown Royal – wallets, keychains, buckles, etc.
  • Paddington Liquors & Goldschlager – on-pack keychains and promotions for their bottles nationwide.
  • Merrill Lynch – complete programs of 3D pewter bull statues for awards worldwide; gold polished bull statues in all sizes for sales awards. This line goes through their catalog companies worldwide. We have been doing these programs for 7 years.
  • GM, Cadillac & Buick – lapel pins and jewelry nationwide. These lines have also gone through catalog houses.
  • Custom programs of all sorts for casinos nationwide. This includes the Harrah’s group, Foxwoods, Fitzgeralds, Mirage, Sahara, Riviera and many Native American casinos nationwide.

MILITARY

We have supplied the military consistently for many years.

MASS MERCHANT

In the mid 90s, we designed an Elvis keychain that had a national sell-through in K-Mart and Wal-Mart. We now have many lines, including a new juvenile, convertible endcap floorstand called T. Annie’s “Bathtime Buddies Magic Soap” that has been sold to Eckerd Drugs, Brooks Pharmacy and major supermarket chains, to name but a few. Our other products being sold to the mass merchants are keychains, ornaments filled with bath confetti on clip strips for every occasion, unique gift sets with CDs, Counter Displays featuring flower soaps and bath confetti as a Holiday Assortment, Gift of Love Display and T. Annie’s Flower Garden Display for Valentines Day, Mother’s Day and Spring. T. Annie’s Doorhangers for every occasion have been a consistent best seller in gift shops across America. Each of these lines are cutting edge products – very creative and unique – giving the mass merchants excellent returns for their money.