How Leabrig Found Me
Around 2009, I started doing weekend garage sales in front of my house. I loved selling, although at the time I could not have explained exactly why. I began going downtown Los Angeles to pick up jewelry and other small items to resell, and one day I came across a few umbrellas...
One weekend, I set up at a closed tire shop with my usual garage-sale items and a few umbrellas. To my surprise, the umbrellas were what caught everyone’s attention—and by the end of the day, I had sold every single one.
Excited, I went straight back downtown and bought more. I found the umbrellas so pretty that I started experimenting with different ways to display them in my front yard. I was already becoming fascinated by the visual side of it.
The next weekend, the display had become huge. Huge enough to get noticed by the police, who very politely asked to see my resale permit. I did not have one. The display came down, and that was the end of selling for the day! But while it had been standing, people had been stopping and buying.
My youngest son Gabriel passed away in 2012. The umbrellas became something that kept me moving through this unimaginable tragedy for our family. They gave me somewhere to put my energy and a reason to keep going and still be a mother to my oldest son. Leabrig is an anagram of Gabriel, chosen in his memory. Over the years, something unexpected started happening in emails and messages: even when i signed my name "Mireille", people would sometimes reply, "Hi Lea". I loved it instantly. I used to call Gabriel "Gab", so being called "Lea" feels like a small echo of that—and it always make me smile.
I remembered visiting the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena, one of the largest outdoor markets on the West Coast, with thousands of vendors selling everything from antiques and vintage finds to new merchandise. I thought, “Why not?”
I was very excited about the event. I showed up with no tent and no real display structure— just a few unstable grids holding the umbrellas. Looking back, I was very lucky there was no wind that day!
After that, I wanted to set up everywhere. Every weekend. I started approaching gas stations and asking if I could sell outside. Talk about visibility!
The owners often thought the idea was rather funny at first. Umbrellas? In California? Who was going to buy them?
People did.
The setups were hard work, but the umbrellas were showstoppers.
Then came outdoor street fairs. Small ones at first, as many as I could find. Fairgoers liked the idea, and event organizers did too.
I started decorating umbrellas myself, adding whatever I thought might give one a little more character. My free time disappeared into trade shows, product searches and constantly improving the displays.
I started to understand what separated a well-made umbrella from a flimsy one—and what to look for before adding something to my collection.
Next came juried events, indoors and outdoors. I became very good at fitting an unreasonable number of umbrellas into a very small space.
I also started introducing luxury umbrellas.
At indoor events, neighboring vendors would sometimes give me the look when they saw all those open umbrellas around them. The old “bad luck” superstition is still very much alive, and some clearly preferred not to be anywhere near my booth. By the end of the event, though, many would come over curious and impressed. They had never thought of umbrellas as a viable business, and they certainly had never seen such a variety of shapes, colors and styles.
Indoor events taught me how much lighting could change a display. I learned where to place lights, what to highlight, and eventually added music too.
And yes, music and umbrellas work very well together.
As fairgoers passed by, I heard countless versions of “I want to see what’s in there,” “That’s beautiful,” and, inevitably, plenty of Mary Poppins references.
Something else became obvious: people often left the booth smiling whether they bought anything or not. Umbrellas made people happy.
The collection has grown enormously over the years and now includes umbrellas from five different countries. That is one of the reasons I enjoy large county and state fairs so much: they give me the space to create full displays, and once evening comes, the lighting adds another dimension to the presentation. Just as important, customers can handle, open and compare the umbrellas for themselves. That hands-on experience reveals differences in shape, materials, construction and feel that photographs alone simply cannot convey.
More than fifteen years later, the passion has not faded. It has evolved.
I am always looking for products that will appeal to a wide range of customers, but what excites me most is finding the rare ones—the one-of-a-kind pieces, discontinued designs, and umbrellas that are simply unforgettable.
What I love most is watching people browse the collection almost like a bee moving from flower to flower, with no idea what they are going to find next. For many, it is a world they never knew existed, and that is what makes it so much fun to watch: one umbrella catches their eye, then another, then another. More than fifteen years later, seeing that discovery happen is still one of my favorite parts of Leabrig.