Front & Center: Entrepreneur balances marketing firm with burgeoning science exhibit enterprise

When Coleen Quisenberry was growing up in Coeur d’Alene, she and her siblings would rush home from school on their bikes during their lunch break to watch reruns of “Bewitched,” the endearing sitcom about a witch named Samantha struggling to lead the life of a suburban housewife.

It wasn’t Samantha who kept Quisenberry spellbound, but rather her husband, Darrin, and his boss Larry Tate at the fictional Madison Avenue advertising agency McMann & Tate.

“Darrin and Larry would pitch concepts back and forth,” Quisenberry said. “I don’t know why, but I just loved it.”

She eventually went on to launch her own eponymous advertising and marketing agency.

But more recently, Quisenberry has switched to Samantha mode and focused on magic – that is, the magic of air rockets, augmented reality sandboxes and photoelasticity bridges.

Those are some of the science center exhibits Quisenberry’s team manufactures in Spokane and ships around the world.

What makes her products unusual is that they easily can be reconfigured to offer patrons fresh experiences – hence the company’s name, Flexhibit.

During a recent interview, Quisenberry discussed “Valley girls,” orangutans and winter in Milwaukee.

S-R: You spell your name with one “l” instead of two. Why is that?

Quisenberry: It’s pronounced “Co-leen,” not “Col-leen.” After having nine children, my parents decided to name their next son “Colman.” I came along instead, so “Colman” became “Coleen.”

S-R: Did they ever get a “Colman”?

Quisenberry: Yes, but not until after three more daughters. Colman was their 14th and final child.

S-R: Where did you grow up?

Quisenberry: In Coeur d’Alene, then Los Angeles and Alaska.

S-R: Where were you during your high school years?

Quisenberry: In the San Fernando Valley. I was one of those Valley girls (Frank Zappa wrote a song about).

S-R: What were your interests?

Quisenberry: Art and design, even then.

S-R: What was your first real job?

Quisenberry: Flipping burgers at a Tastee-Freez when I was 16.

S-R: Did you go to college?

Quisenberry: Yes. I got a graphic design degree from Anchorage Community College.

S-R: Then what?

Quisenberry: I designed Yellow Page ads. But I quit after six months because I didn’t want to do what I thought was art and then have someone tear it apart. Even Yellow Page ads can get really personal for a designer. So I went into the other side of advertising – marketing – and worked in radio, television and newspaper before starting my own ad agency in Spokane in 1991.

S-R: What brought you here?

Quisenberry: I wanted to get back to four seasons.

S-R: And you still have your ad agency?

Quisenberry: Yes, it’s alive and well. We’ve had as many as 25 employees, but the marketing world has changed. You can do a lot more with fewer people. We still have our core team but also contract work out.

S-R: And Flexhibit is a totally separate company?

Quisenberry: Yes. I run both of them.

S-R: How big is Flexhibit?

Quisenberry: It’s the ad agency’s largest account, and it’s trying to take over my life. It requires a lot of travel, because we sell at conferences and do installs all over the world.

S-R: How did you get into designing and building science center exhibits in the first place?

Quisenberry: My ad agency had programmers on staff, and there weren’t a lot of new things to program except for kiosks, which were popping up everywhere.

So we started programming content, and then decided to create our own kiosks.

S-R: Who was your first client?

Quisenberry: The San Diego Zoo. I met the curator of their orangutan exhibit in 2010, and we designed kiosks – cement trees – that had computers inside so the orangs could play memory games for enrichment and people wouldn’t even notice. That got me back to my true love, which is design.

S-R: How did that morph into Flexhibit?

Quisenberry: Big projects like that – we also created 23 custom exhibits for the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary in California – take a lot out of you, and when they’re done, they’re done. We were looking for something to sustain us between custom jobs that also would be better for science centers and museums, which tend to build out huge exhibits, and within six months those exhibits are somewhat irrelevant.

With Flexhibit, instead of having to build a new, $500,000 area, they can swap out modular exhibits.

S-R: Going from designing Yellow Page ads to modular museum exhibits seems like a pretty big leap.

Quisenberry: It was a big leap, but I just seem to follow where the world takes me, and it’s always worked out.

S-R: Have any of your ventures ever been at risk of failing?

Quisenberry: Oh, sure.

S-R: What did that teach you?

Quisenberry: To stay close to the heart of the business, and let other things go.

S-R: What’s your goal with Flexhibit?

Quisenberry: To get to where we can sell things off the shelf. Right now, everything is sold before it’s finished.

S-R: Do you have competitors?

Quisenberry: People all over the world build museum exhibits, but I think we’re the only ones focusing on a high-quality, inexpensive modular systems.

S-R: Could you expand your potential market by getting into, say, modular furniture?

Quisenberry: We already are. We make stools and benches, and there’s interest in our desks.

S-R: With clients all over the world, is there any advantage or disadvantage to being based in Spokane?

Quisenberry: The advantage is I love it here, and we have really diligent, hard workers. Manufacturing in Seattle might get us one step closer to a ship, but that’s not a big deal.

S-R: What’s the best business advice you ever got?

Quisenberry: My brother, Jerry Neeser, who owns a huge construction company in Alaska, said to me, “Coleen, deal with the numbers once a month, and then put them behind you. Because if you look at those too closely, you’re looking at the wrong end of things. You’re looking at what things are costing rather than what you’re making.”

S-R: What factors affect your business?

Quisenberry: Philanthropy, for one, and philanthropy tends to dry up in presidential years because of uncertainty. So the beginning of this year was tough.

S-R: Do you have a guiding philosophy or mantra?

Quisenberry: I don’t know where it came from, but there’s a saying, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” I try to run my businesses that way, and it seems to work.

S-R: What do you like most about your job?

Quisenberry: The variety keeps me jumping all over the place, which I find stimulating.

S-R: What do you like least?

Quisenberry: Running the business itself.

S-R: How do you market your products?

Quisenberry: Through trade shows, email blasts, direct mail and keyword searches. We just got back from the largest conference for us, the U.S. Association of Science-Technology Centers, which was held in San Jose.

S-R: How did that go?

Quisenberry: It was fabulous. So many people were happy to see us. We’ve come of age, and I think we’re about to explode.

S-R: Are you hiring?

Quisenberry: Yes.

S-R: What qualities do you look for in employees?

Quisenberry: People who are team players and are responsible. This is a small business, so everybody wears a lot of hats.

S-R: What are you most proud of about Flexhibit?

Quisenberry: Discovering a need and going with it, even though I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into.

S-R: Could it ever dwarf your marketing business?

Quisenberry: Financially, yes. Within five years, Flexhibit will be huge. But I’ll still always have a foot in the marketing side.

S-R: What have you learned lately?

Quisenberry: As I’ve gotten Flexhibit up and running, I’ve learned the other side of marketing. For once I am the client, which has made me a much better marketer. I now understand what irritates clients, and why.

S-R: What challenges lie ahead?

Quisenberry: Large, fast growth is always a challenge. Right now, we build everything. If things take off the way I think they will, we’ll probably become a fulfillment center – assembling packages and shipping them out – and leave the manufacturing to someone else. But it could still be manufactured in Spokane.

S-R: Any new products in the pipeline?

Quisenberry: The biggest thing is the Flexhibit S.T.E.M. cart. We’ve taken our most popular exhibits and turned them into carts that can be wheeled in and out of classrooms. The carts are being tested at Mead Middle School. They’ll cost about $10,000, and could be the catalyst for huge growth.

S-R: When you sell to clients in Ireland and Paris and Israel, can you tag along when the products are delivered?

Quisenberry: Yes.

S-R: Do you enjoy that?

Quisenberry: I love it! I don’t go to all the installs. For instance, I didn’t go to Milwaukee in January. Why would you? (laugh) But I certainly went to St. Thomas in January.

Writer Michael Guilfoil can be contacted at mguilfoil@comcast.net.