These three woman-owned businesses are evolving Arizona’s economy for the better through their commitment to quality, transparency, and purposeful work. Read on to hear their stories.
Anna May Cory: Celebrating 20 Years at Pines Inn & Suites
Anna May Cory just changed the name of her Cottonwood lodge to Pines Inn & Suites. Built in 1996 as the 12-room Cottonwood Pines Motel, 920 S. Camino Real, Cottonwood, the acre property is, as she sees it, a boutique getaway. This isn’t the 1950s-style place your parents or grandparents happened to pull into after tiring of driving; Pines Inn & Suites will be one of the highlights of your Arizona adventure.
“We’re really a unique family-owned and -operated property with personal, friendly service we pride ourselves on. It just makes sense we would improve our name, logo, and image to match the quality of our product,” Anna May explains. “We are affordable, friendly, and modern.”
This May, her family is celebrating 20 years of ownership.
“During that time, we’ve invested time, energy, upgrades, and made countless improvements to make our inn the special place it is,” she says.
She has had the parking lot paved, a salt water pool built, and installed the area’s first Tesla charging stations at a lodging venue. In 2008 she remodeled the property, adding 15 units and a lobby area where guests can receive free chilled and filtered water in their refillable bottles, eliminating plastic waste to the landfills or as litter. Because of this and other environmental efforts, the inn is Certified Green by the Arizona Lodging & Tourism Association and Certified Silver by the Sustainability Alliance of Arizona.
Some of the 26 rooms have kitchenettes. They have a variety of bed sizes, and customers can also select the Apartment or Grand suites. Dogs of all sizes are welcome.
While capitalizing the property during the last two decades, she remembered her father’s advice: “He went through the Great Depression and taught me to not spend money I did not have,” she says. “This philosophy has kept us out of debt.”
In addition to minding paternal guidance, she had acquired years of business experience before purchasing the inn. Formerly a resident of Lakewood, Ohio, she owned and operated six health food stores from 1968 to 1985. From her next home in Aspen, Colorado, she also operated a gourmet cheese store from 1978 to 1985.
In 1986, she moved to Sedona and owned the Prickly Pear Restaurant from 1989 to 1994, and then managed the Railroad Inn, also in town.
In 1998, she moved to Cottonwood to become the general manager of the Verde Canyon Railroad in nearby Clarkdale. After becoming a real estate agent, she learned that the Cottonwood motel was for sale and she saw her destiny.
Cottonwood, “The Heart of Arizona Wine Country,” is about an hour and a half north of the Valley, 18 miles west of Sedona and close to Jerome and Camp Verde. Pines Inn & Suites is just one block from State Highways 260 and 89A and about an eight-minute drive from vibrant Old Town Cottonwood, with its cafés, restaurants, and wine boutiques, such as Pillsbury Wine Company Tasting Room on Main Street. In addition, the Verde Valley is known for its vineyards, state parks, hiking, and Tuzigoot National Monument. Other attractions are the Verde Canyon Railroad and Out of Africa.
As a family team, she assists with capital improvements and marketing, her daughter-in-law Martha Bruening is the general manager, and her son Cory Bruening oversees much of the back-of-the-house, including software upgrades and maintenance.
“My goal this year is to produce YouTube videos with information about our property, as well as activities here in Cottonwood,” she notes, adding that she is learning about online marketing through the Yavapai College Small Business Makeover.
In this business instance and for herself, she continues to learn, remembering always the Albert Einstein maxim: “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
She notes: “In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to reveal my weaknesses,’ I say, ‘Wow, here’s a chance to grow.’”
Three recent Trip Advisor reviews indicate that 20 years of growth-mindedness and hard work is working. Claudia B., for instance, was upgraded to the Grand Suite and noted that “the apartment was spacious, comfortable, and beautifully decorated… and this was an affordable alternative to the expensive Sedona hotels.”
Glenda B. and her family were visiting the local national monuments: “This little motel was an unexpected surprise… Super clean… Just right.”
And, for Maggie, “The Pines [Inn] was the perfect place to make home base… We will be back.”
Visit www.pinesinnandsuites.com for more information.
Isabel Dellinger Candelaria: Earth and Images, and Beauty
Isabel Dellinger Candelaria was born and raised in Española, a small city about halfway between Santa Fe and Taos along the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico.
“It was a beautiful place to grow up. The skies were bright blue, and every sunset was beautiful. I learned early to appreciate nature and to use my imagination,” she recalls.
From early on, she liked the outdoors and indoor spaces, too. When she was a girl, she began to consider interiors and imagined how rooms might be improved.
“I didn’t figure that out as a career, though, until my 30s,” she notes with a smile.
Her mom worked as a med tech, her dad was a logger, and her grandfather owned a sawmill.
“They made a lot of beams in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, so if you built a home in the Santa Fe area back then, there’s a good chance it had one of our beams,” the Phoenix-based interior designer recalls.
She earned a bachelor’s in psychology from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. Her senior thesis, Consumer Involvement in a Straw Bale Group Home, combined these passions for the environment and space-creating.
“I was obsessed with the straw bale method of construction at the time, so I came up with the idea of having the residents participate in the construction of a care facility,” she recalls.
Her concept was similar to that of Habitat for Humanity, although she wasn’t familiar with the home-building group at the time.
“Both enrich the lives of the inhabitants through participation and ownership,” she explains.
She pitched her idea to the State of New Mexico, which supported funding the project at first. But, because straw bale construction was just beginning and there wasn’t enough documentation that the materials would last, even though there were standing structures more than 100 years old, the State ultimately declined.
A Valley resident since 1992, she acquired her Earth and Images firm in 2007. There, she met local architect Mark Candelaria, AIA, in December 2010, through Facebook, then in person for business at her studio. They made it personal soon after, and married three years later at Lake Como in the Villa d’Este. Two years ago, prior to the pandemic, the couple returned to the five-star hotel to celebrate their anniversary and her recovery from breast cancer.
“We’re wired the same way, in that we are always focused on our clients. We want to make them happy,” she says. “And, just because it’s five o’clock, we just don’t turn it off; we’re always working for them. We’re very lucky to have that kind of commonality. We are happily enmeshed.”
When she was just getting started, she completed two commercial projects: renewing 32 rooms at the Franciscan Renewal Center on Lincoln Drive and the lobby at Café Valley Bakery in Buckeye. She then added color to three home models in Payson, and followed this with her first residential remodel in Desert Mountain.
“Everything took off from there and we have now done more than 60 projects of all styles and sizes,” she says.
These include two Barrio Queens, The Herb Box restaurant in Scottsdale, and many residential remodels and new-builds.
Her environmental efforts are rooted in common sense.
“Wherever we can work with clients to use what they already have, we do. For instance, we might move furniture that clients might be tired of from primary to secondary locations. We might reupholster and fluff up existing soft goods instead of purchasing new. We also repurpose items.”
One client had stashed an old dresser from the 1920s in a shaded area.
“We had it refurbished into the vanity base for their powder room, and it looks smashing,” she says. “She loves it because it was something meaningful to her, and now it’s in a place where it shows.”
Earth and Images applies this to materials as well, saving fuel, packaging, and other costs.
“For instance, if we are doing a remodel and can work with existing ceiling heights and designs, we can freshen up existing beams by sandblasting if they are too dark to lighten them up, or to correct an ’80s whitewash by making them the more acceptable wood tone of today’s demand.”
Candelaria and her seven associates just moved into a larger studio at 4120 N. 20th St., Ste. B, Phoenix.
“The bursts of creativity, the science of figuring out design concepts, and leading my team are what I find so fulfilling about my work. Then our clients take it over the top for me,” she says. “My heart beats to the frequency of beauty. My purpose in life is to create it.”
See www.earthandimages.com for more information.
Ann Siner: A Life’s Purpose Repurposing
In 1991, Ann Siner and her sister Jennifer leased a small storefront at Camelback Road and 20th Street in Phoenix. Siner was then-director of marketing for PetSmart.
“It took several tries before we found a shopping center that would take a chance with letting in a resale/consignment store,” she recalls. “We had been turned down by several other shopping centers. No one wanted a resale store!”
But that first My Sister’s Closet was well received, so they expanded with other stores and new concepts.
Today, Siner s the CEO of Eco-Chic Consignments Inc., which includes three high-end designer consignment concepts with 11 Arizona and San Diego-area locations: My Sister’s Closet (clothes for women), My Sister’s Attic (home furnishings) and Well Suited (clothes for men). The company also manages a 501c3 thrift store in Chandler, My Sisters’ Charities. Her sister Tess Loo is now a partial owner and chief fashion officer for the company.
Each shop sells consigned items at 60%–90% below retail, and the public has positively responded: Eco-Chic Consignments is now a $30-plus million business with 117 employees.
“I’m proud to say I’ve never taken out a loan, and we were in the black in the first year of business,” Siner says, noting that she plans to expand web sales as well as open more brick-and-mortar stores in Arizona, California, and possibly new markets.
Success is based in keeping to the basics: “We catered to the customer with convenience, we’re open seven days a week, our consignors get paid as soon as their items sell, and no appointment is needed,” she explains. “It was a hit with people ready to clean out their closets.”
Says one customer: “I bought a car from the money I made selling my clothes and furniture.”
And another: “I paid my rent in 2010 from selling things I really didn’t need when the economy was so bad.”
Siner and Loo were born in Colorado Springs. Siner moved to the Valley in the 1980s to attend the Thunderbird Graduate Business School in Glendale.
“I got a job in Phoenix after graduating and had to admit I really loved it here,” she says. Loo went to school in Chico, California, and joined the business in 2010 as the visual merchandising and social media manager.
Siner enjoys her dogs and cats and loves to hike in the desert. She has served on boards for the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center, the Nature Conservancy, and the President’s Council for Defenders of Wildlife. She has also been a board member at Fresh Start Women’s Foundation, and is on the Board of Trustees for both the Phoenix Art Museum and the Arizona Humane Society.
Green is always fashionable at Eco-Chic.
“We are beyond committed to the environment,” she explains.
For instance, the stores ban single-use plastics such as plastic bags. Employees are given a refillable Yeti-type water vessel, and the locations all have Elkay filtered-water fountains.
“Even though this costs us around $60,000 a year not to use plastic bags, we feel the savings are worth helping the environment and the oceans get rid of plastic,” she says.
The business also promotes full-life-cycle use.
“What we can’t sell in our stores, we donate to thrift stores. What they can’t sell is purchased by a bulk buyer,” she adds. “Our goal is to keep toxic materials out of landfills.”
During 30 years, nonprofits have benefitted from generous company donations, including Fresh Start Women’s Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, San Diego Humane Society, and Phoenix Art Museum.
The company has just donated another $100,000 to the Arizona Humane Society as part of a three-year, $1 million commitment for its new Central Campus and Animal Medical Center, which is set to begin construction this year near the juncture of the 202 and 143 freeways in Phoenix. That facility will deliver acute medical and trauma care, behavior rehabilitation, rescue and cruelty investigations, adoption resources, and education programs.
Dr. Steven Hansen, Arizona Humane Society (AHS) president and CEO, says, “Ann, Tess and the team behind Eco-Chic Consignments Inc. are not only an integral part of this community, but their philanthropic generosity has helped transform our community for homeless pets, and for that we are grateful.”
Adds Siner: “I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this campaign and I am 100% behind them and everything they do. Animals are my life’s work, and I wanted to really make a difference.
“Our donation gets AHS closer to fulfilling the dream of the new campus that will provide care for our most vulnerable pets––the sick, injured, abused, and abandoned––and ultimately save the lives of hundreds of thousands more animals in the process.”
Visit www.mysisterscloset.com for more information.
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