We recently connected with Gillian Harris and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Gillian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
At this time of what feels like a global attack and, at minimum, an attack in the U.S. on the rights of women, I am determined to keep Valet Of The Dolls, LLC open long enough to find a new owner who will not exploit it in any way. A person or an entity that will, instead, enhance this sweet company and continue this popular and loved business of female valets into the distant future.
After 21 years at the helm of this company I’m in the midst of a critical life change. As I face this, I’m also adjusting by launching my newest business (a Metaphysical learning academy) but the journey has suddenly stopped me in my tracks. This, after learning that the entities who are most interested in buying the company, want it for the business volume but they would eliminate the female part of it. They’d tell the folks requesting quotes and service that Valet Of The Dolls is no longer in business “but we would LOVE to provide you a quote”. They want to take our business flow while resting in the comfort that we are no longer thorn in the side competition. And with that – in the city of L.A., anyway, FEMALE VALET would be rendered extinct! Valet Of The Dolls was one of three. The other two are pretty much gone now. VOTD is all that is left and is still very busy. We are one of the oldessher, oldest, well-established and highly reputable companies in the city. The boy companies seem to want us gone!! It is my mission to see that Valet Of The Dolls lives on well past my ownership.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m a daddy’s girl! Part of that is excelling in driving skills since my earliest days! Manual transmissions (I Love downshifting!). Love executing quarter inch precision while in reverse motion. This driving talent just runs in my blood. So when my radio career ended in 2000 and I was looking for a way to slow down the spending of my savings (!) I found a valet parking gig at a FEMALE valet parking service! This went from being a job to a very profitable business and the way I’d spend my life for the next 23 years (including the 19 months I spent at that initial valet company). Now, it has morphed again, as I find my company, Valet Of The Dolls, LLC, is pretty much the only one left! I’m now in a campaign to prevent the full EXTINCTION OF FEMALE VALET.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
I was just finding work to do while I got another radio gig! Next thing I know I’m the Olivia Pope (from the T.V. Series ‘Scandal) of the valet industry. The chosen guest parking solution to the most high-end of clients and also for normal folks who simply had no place for their guests to park near their home! Some folks aren’t showing off when they hire valet. They actually have a parking problem and their guests will genuinely need valet. I’d like to share the story of how I started, scaled up and competed so hard and successfully that potential buyers of the company actually want to buy it so they can eliminate it as competition even though that would also mean RENDERING FEMALE VALET EXTINCT.
Right now, if a man wants to get a valet parking job in the city of Los Angeles and has no experience, all he has to do is call one of more than one hundred companies, and he can take his pick of which company to work for. If a woman wants to get a valet parking job in the city of Los Angeles, she is going to be turned away by pretty much all of those same companies unless they are looking to fill their little quota of a couple or few females among their army of male parking attendants.
If a woman wants to get a valet parking job and NOT be discriminated against for not having experience or for simply being female, she can only go to ONE place right now and that’s 21 year old Valet Of The Dolls, LLC. This company specializes in ‘private events’ so is at a different location for every parking operation; weddings, parties, fundraisers, grand openings. Mostly at homes but sometimes is a commercial location operating in the Greater Los Angeles, Orange County and Palm Springs areas. Admittedly, the vast majority of our clients come from Greater L.A. (including Culver City, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank and more including Malibu which is where we are based).
I got a call recently from a woman wanting a job valeting with us. She’d tried the other female valet company but they told her they don’t hire anyone without experience. That was a red-flag to me. Feels like something is awry at that company. Do you know the chances of finding females who already have valet experience?!? Not very good!! They are rare because the opportunity to valet is NOT as abundant for women as it is for men. I’ve heard from others trying to get work at that other company and the information indicates they may be fading out, if not out, already. During the pandemic lockdown, I learned the owner of that company, a super sweet lady, was starting a coaching practice. It’s possible she’s decided to just do that… A very similar story to mine except that I feel a responsibility to make sure female valets are still abundantly alive and kicking for the distant future.
Excited about my newest venture, a metaphysical learning academy (Stargate Adventure, LLC www.StargateAdventure.com) and ready to launch and fully immerse myself in that, months ago, I began dialogue with several people and entities interested in buying Valet Of The Dolls. What I’ve learned is frightening. In one conversation I was told how MUCH they coveted ownership of our phone number, website and email address so they could consume the plethora of quote requests that we get. But, he said, we’d do those parties under OUR company name not Valet Of The Dolls. “I don’t want a female valet company, ” he clarified. He sighted personalities as the reason. And I immediately realized my ownership of VOTD at this time, is possibly the only reason female valet is still an option, in Southern California.
At this time when the political climate regarding women is so disempowering I’m having a hard time letting it go. Over the past two decades, not only have we been a phenomenal service, but I’ve watched this opportunity put food on the table and keep the lights on at thousands of households run by the women who’ve worked for us and did quality time and great work as ‘Dolls’! With an inner company motto ‘A Drive for Ambition & An Ambition To Drive’ Valet Of The Dolls has always leaned toward hiring the smartest and most productive of people who apply. Yes there are actors, singers and dancers but there are also teachers, nurses, realtors – even had a couple air traffic controllers, attorneys and one Doll who stayed with us until she’d literally become a doctor and started her practice. True story!
While many women come to us in a bit of a crisis – maybe needing to pay down a bill or two or maybe they’re between jobs, they find themselves addicted to the work and with their crisis eventually solved and over, they end up elongating their stay in the ‘Doll Force’, sometimes for many YEARS! We have veteran valets who’ve been with us for nearly 15 years!! We’re now old enough that some ladies who left to begin their families, now have children who are beginning college! Blows my mind! Even if they haven’t worked for VOTD for more than a decade, it is with great pride that many ladies proudly acknowledge time spent with us working in the trenches of parking operations.
And while this company has provided urgent sustenance it has also provided sisterhood and friendships that, for many, will last a lifetime. Whether currently employed as a Doll or on the roster of alumni Dolls, there’s a connection that draws us all close like a family. We ARE family, and the network created as a result of that, is pretty powerful when needed. How can I walk away without first doing everything in my power to make sure this company is left in the hands of someone who gets it – respects it – and sees the value both monetarily and the urgency politically.
HOW DID IT GET LIKE THIS?
In a wonderful ‘Los Angeles Business Journal’ article (Feb 2022) there’s a typo or misquote, unfortunately! I just noticed it. The very first female valet parking service was ‘The Valettes’ started by Maureen O’Sullivan. The Valettes started in the very early 1980s. Approximately 1983. This team of valets was known for giving a rose to every guest! This was a complimentary and very popular part of their service! A lady named Dana Hartley was looking for extra work and found herself working for The Valettes. She hated it though. Maureen didn’t allow the valets to accept a TIPS! Can you imagine?! O M G! Maureen wouldn’t even allow the clients to tip if they literally begged to!! And my guess is if they did slip a tip into their final bill via check (the old days) it did NOT make it to the valets. Like other valets, Dana was NOT happy and decided to start her OWN valet company in 1988 called ‘Valet Girls’. This name was a play on the term trending at the time, ‘valley girls’!
So, Dana and Maureen would now compete against each other while I continued my 20 year journey in Los Angeles radio! My time as an air personality would end at 103.9/98.3 KACE FM in January 2000. The station was sold and became Spanish, a language I have yet to learn! After making a few trips to the Caribbean (Tortola, my favorite island) to de-stress a bit, I decided to find a job in the neighborhood. Was living in Malibu Canyon at the time and based in Malibu was ‘Valet Girls’. I found a job listing for them in a local Malibu newspaper and called immediately! I LOVE to drive and can drive anything so I was hired immediately.
By this point, Dana was exhausted with the business and wanted out. She took me up on an offer to run her company for her so I could learn the business. “If I like it and I’m good at it, I’ll buy it from you”, I told her. Over 19 months I more than doubled the size of her company while tripling her valet force from approximately 30 to more than 100 people on the roster, ready to work. She’d never seen such healthy profit. Instead of selling to me, she refused every offer I made and in December of 2002 she fired me! For me, this was the best Christmas gift ever! I immediately did what is hugely difficult, and Dana didn’t expect I’d pull it off.
March 3, 2003, I started my own company complete with an insurance policy which is the most difficult part to do at the beginning. My dad and grandmother had witnessed what I could do with Valet Girls including finding the ‘investors’ I’d gotten commitments from to help me pay the nearly $100K price tag. Even though she was asking too much, I’d found every dime and was ready. She turned down all five of my offers even the last one offering to give her everything she’d asked for but I needed the escrow process and she refused.
My father offered to fund me to simply start my own company! My grandmother chipped in to match dad’s offer and for just less than $20K, I was off and running! I already knew what I was going to call the valet company! The name alone would propel us…
I spent an adventurous 2.5 hours a day, as a latchkey kid during my elementary school years. Dad had the book ‘The Valley of the Dolls’ on his nightstand. I was nosey! The cover photo was super provocative but… there were no pictures inside so, I was too young to find appreciation and didn’t read it. I remembered the title though and that is how ‘Valet Of The Dolls, LLC’ got its name!! (I must admit, to this day I only know the story behind the book and movie, and have never read or watched either! That’s on my bucket list!)
So, when Valet Of The Dolls started in 2003 there were THREE places where a woman could get a valet parking job with no experience. Valet Of The Dolls was the largest. And in those days, we didn’t hire anyone who couldn’t drive a manual transmission! Stick drivers are actually difficult to find now, so, at Valet Of The Dolls, we pay stick drivers more than non-stick drivers, just to show appreciation!
Because Valet Of The Dolls started on the heels of my time at Valet Girls and there was no contract or promise not to compete with her I fully competed! I sent postcards advertising this new company to entire neighborhoods around the 200+ addresses I’d worked as a valet for Valet Girls. Here me clearly: I purposely avoided sending those notices to the actual houses that had commissioned Valet Girls, but I sent the notice to every one of their neighbors! So, 200 addresses turned into THOUSANDS of addresses in prime valet using neighborhoods!! Our first client was Movie Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Day after tomorrow, Moon Fall and more). The entertainment industry is our bread and butter but we’ve also worked for every White House since 2003. We are THAT company.
Twenty of my friends who were also valets at Valet Girls, came with me to commence what we soon nicknamed ‘VOTD’! I was already teaching a precision driving course (something no other valet company was doing) so I knew who the great drivers were. We were a new company of HIGHLY SEASONED and extremely enthusiastic valets! Three months in, we were working a two day, 200 car per day event in the Mount Olympus area which was coincidentally attended by representatives of ‘Los Angeles Magazine’. From that encounter, we made ‘Best of L. A. 2003’. This triggered interviews with every television news station, newspaper and entertainment show. We skyrocketed faster than I could actually handle. Though I had administrative assistance, I learned how to do 26 hour days and I set off on a trend that would see me not take a single day off for the next 14 years!
In the early days, I’d let myself do however many parties were requested on any given day. One day there were 19 parking operations for us. I had deployed nearly 100 valets that day. I was also exhausted to the point of feeling downright drunk. So, I swore that off. “No more than 60 valets will be deploy in any one day”, I declared. In our first year we did 100 parties, 2nd year, 200 , 3rd year 300 and by the 5th year in 2008 we were at 500 parties. The 2nd great depression happened and during that period, though our revenue decreased 28% we still did the same number of parties!! Maintained the same number of clients! They were just smaller as our hosts (even the richest) were cutting back on what they spent.
Coming out the other side of that economic disaster, we STILL had the same number of clients and our financial numbers started to rise again. This time period, 2008 – 2010 showed me how strong VOTD is! We’ve got an extremely loyal customer base which has a lot to do with the energy and benefits of hiring female valets.
The vast majority of the people who call to arrange valet service are female. They are the ladies of the house, party planners or assistants and girl-power is not only real but strong! From the beginning I had no interest in competing with teeny weeny micro companies also providing valet service. I wanted to go large. So, I focused on competing against the large male companies. We proceeded to be a financial thorn in their side all these years. We’ve been a competitive force to deal with and they’d like to eliminate us as competition now – female valet will be gone.
So, I am moving forward with my new company but am also intending to find the perfect person or entity to carry this sweet company, Valet Of The Dolls, forward into the distant future.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
The best commercial we can do is for the people getting our service: the guests of the people who hired us. Also, the neighbors of the people who hired us. We put a business card in every car! On the back of that card is a promise of a discount on our service if they simply mention the card when calling to book service!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ValetofTheDolls.com