HILLSBOROUGH: Vendor fair Sunday combines businesswoman’s dual careers

By Audrey Levine, Staff Writer
   In combining her current work selling sterling silver jewelry and her main career as a corporate meeting planner, Fran Lumia-Wilkens, of Hillsborough’s Meetings By Design, is preparing to hold her first vendor fair Sunday at the Bridgewater Manor, on Route 206 in Bridgewater.
   ”In October 2007, I started my own sterling silver jewelry business, Affordable Elegance … and began doing home events, street fairs and the like,” she said. “As you can imagine, the world is not breaking down my door (for the jewelry), so I decided to combine both my careers.”
   For her jewelry business, Ms. Lumia-Wilkens said, she goes to different shows and purchases pieces she likes, then sells them in her own fairs.
   ”I go where I can purchase them wholesale, then I sell them retail,” she said. “It is all rhodium-plated sterling silver, which prevents it from tarnishing.”
   Ms. Lumia-Wilkens said she began her second business because of her love of jewelry, and as a side venture while continuing with her career.
   ”While I was still (working at another company), and until 2007, I made time to work at a jewelry store part time, which is really my first love,” she said.
   Before beginning her work with jewelry, Ms. Lumia-Wilkens said, she worked only as a meeting planner, which means she was employed by a company or contracted to plan meetings around the world.
   ”I find the location and plan the meeting,” she said of the business she has been in for more than 30 years. “My career in that field began at Exxon Corporation, but the travel began to interfere too much with my life, so I decided to leave to start my own company in 1992.”
   From that decision was born Meetings By Design, through which Ms. Lumia-Wilkens said she has continued to garner contacts with hotels and other venues. From this, she said, she decided to organize a vendor fair for her pieces and the work of others, in an attempt to help her business and other professionals who are suffering during the current economic recession.
   Among the vendors participating in the fair, Ms. Lumia-Wilkens said, is Body Essential Therapeutic Massage & Wellness, in Somerville, as well as people selling homemade cards, hand-knitted items, baby quilts, homemade cookies, glass panels, organic dog treats and chocolate with photos baked right into the food.
   ”Those are some of the really unique vendors we have participating,” she said. “I also decided that it was important to have vendor exclusivity at this event.”
   For this reason, Ms. Lumia-Wilkens said, for the most part, there are no more than two vendors selling similar products.
   The free fair will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Hunterdon Room of the Bridgewater Manor.
   Ms. Lumia-Wilkens said, in the past, she has participated in fairs at schools or church parking lots, but she hopes this one stands out among others.
   ”The facility is really lovely and a unique venue for a vendor fair,” she said. “The ones I’ve participated in are in a school or church parking lot, or a firehouse and, without vendor exclusion, anyone can come. I knew there had to be something about this particular show that had to stand out, and I’m hoping that we’ve got the right combination in place.”