Maui Staging Group - Furnishing Homes Beautifully

What can I do for you?” Discount Girl wants to know amongst other things.

That would be Betsy Talon of Maui Staging Group talking, who after 25 years of merchandising here on Maui has built a successful word-of-mouth staging and container-storage retail business along with her husband, Joe.

“We don’t advertise. Don’t even have a website,” she announces in part to explain her self-admitted Discount Girl moniker and their company’s low overhead. “So we can help people who can least afford it…like maybe those whose parents have passed on and left a condo that’s in need of selling and hasn’t been upgraded in the last 20 years. I can go in there with a minimal budget and make it look beautiful. On the high end, we work well with developers (and bank repos). We rent all the furnishings to the owners. We also help people building their own homes by going to Bali and buying materials and furnishings.”

Currently, Maui Staging Group has four large containers on Talon’s personal property in Launiupoko on Maui’s west side, making for what she calls “some unglamorous shopping”. But where she insists, once inside, you’ll find everything you need from furniture and artwork to a complete line of home accessories, statues, vases, bowls and other unique items worthy of any office party or welcomed hostess gift.

And while the bulk of these products are Balinese, others are Maui made and/or complimented by Maui hands, namely hers and her Joe’s.

“I do the creative stuff like hand painting, contracts, and dealing with clients. He does everything else,” Betsy says, “Especially all of the repairs and managing inventory, warehousing, and deliveries.”

He’s also taken more interest lately in one of their bestsellers called “Footsies” -- a small, hand-held, carved foot of pumice stone that’s neatly tied with a bow to a bar of Maui-made soap and marketed as “Scrub your feet the Hawaiian Way with a piece of the island.”

Footsies retail for about $15 and have become the company’s “million-dollar” item, making it a staple product for the Discount Girl to happily sell. Well, that and a popular set of drink coasters for about the same price that they market as “Drinks on the Beach” because they’re made from swirled bands of various brightly colored sands.

Beyond these two products and spanning the last twelve years, Maui Staging Group has established wholesale relationships with more than 40 vendors on Maui, Kauai, The Big Island, Molokai and Lanai. They have also provided furnishings, art and accessories to a few local Maui hotel rooms and lobbies, like the Kahana Royal, the Royal Lahaina Resort, the Whaler Condominiums and the Kaanapali Alii.

On average, their company stages about eight homes, condos, or estates for rent, sale or lease annually. And last but not least, they also stage personal living spaces, although, Betsy readily admits she’s not an interior decorator but a stager, a difference in professions she acknowledges thusly, “They (Interior Decorators) do everything from window treatments to flooring. I go into a space that needs help and draw from a rich background from studying art and having been in retail and merchandising for many years. I know how to make a small place feel big, a big space feel cozy.”

“I get my jollies making places look beautiful,” she adds, which needless to say, she does and from which she funnels her joy back into her personal life.

“We’re happy,” she says with a smile. “We’re in an idyllic setting here (on Maui) and I don’t know anyone else who can do what we do. We have no warehouse; no expenses and I have a giving partner who compliments everything I do. Best of all he does what I least like to do… I am never at a loss to be grateful for everything I have.’

‘So what can Maui Staging Group do for you?” Betsy, the Discount Girl asks. “How much do you want to spend and how can we make your dream come true?”

To contact Maui Staging Group, E-mail them at MauiStaging@hawaiiantel.net or you can call Betsy Talon directly at (808)-280-0262; Joe Talon at (808)-205-2597; or Fax to (808)-667-7657. Maui Staging Group is located on Maui’s west side in Launiupoko at 75 Wailau Place in Lahaina, HI.

Written by Elaine Gallant, Mar. 2014
www.WestMauiBookclub.com