December 2001 / January 2002

Aromatique Sale Again ‘A Winning Situation’

The line stretched out of the Jeff Banks Student Union, in front of Ward Towers, and down the sidewalk all the way to Campus Drive next to the Education II Building. Hundreds of UAMS employees waited in line for as long as 45 minutes on a cold November day. But the inconvenience was more than offset by the benefits of the seventh annual Aromatique™ sale. The sale is a chance for employees to stock up on the Arkansas manufacturer’s popular decorative items at huge savings. More importantly, it also represents a significant gift to UAMS by the company’s owners, Patricia and Richard Upton of Heber Springs. The total value of their donations to the auxiliary comes to $485,216 over seven years.

The sale requires a large amount of logistical support every year. Fifty UAMS Medical Center Auxiliary volunteers, and a few employees who took days off, helped out this year.

“It is a madhouse. It keeps you on your toes,” auxiliary volunteer Ronald Stanfield said. “The last two years they have let a limited number of people come in at once, because before you couldn’t walk from table to table. By limiting the number of people that come in, they could see the merchandise a little better, have a little better chance to get around, and not as much of a problem in checking out with it.”

Stanfield, 66, a retired information systems manager for the state, said his job was to keep the counter stocked, not an easy task when the merchandise is jumping off the shelves. He worked all day on the day of the sale, November 16. But he said every year he’s gotten out of “the hard work,” the unloading of trucks the day before the sale.

Liz Genz, director of volunteers, UAMS Medical Center Auxiliary, said close to $6,000 in merchandise was left over, and will be made available in a second sale sometime next spring. Following that sale the auxiliary board will look at proposals from various UAMS departments, and make a determination on how the money should be distributed.

“A winning situation” is the way Stanfield described the arrangement. “Aromatique gets a tax credit and gets rid of excess stock. (Employees) get it at half price. And by having the volunteers man the counters, all the proceeds go into the auxiliary fund. So, to me it looked like a winning situation all the way around.”