Lou Galipeau knows what women want.

Galipeau

Along with being the manager investor relations for the Madison Chamber of Commerce, Galipeau is the number one salesperson for Miche Bags in the Southeastern region.

He was awarded the Silver award for sales in 2009 for being the top salesperson in the southeastern region.

Miche bags give women the ability to interchange our shells of purses to give it a different look. This saves the time of having to switch contents to a different purse.

He credits his success to networking and selling products to wives and girlfriends.

“Where I’ve had success is selling to men for gift ideas,” Galipeau said. “What I do is make a guy a hero. He can’t make a mistake.”

In May, he will travel to Atlanta for the company’s regional conference, where he’ll be awarded the Gold award. He has sold more than $45,000 worth of purses since he started in 2009.

“That’s my niche, being able to sell ladies products to both men and women,” he said. “I always use the tag, ‘I know what women want.’”

Galipeau’s experience in marketing to women also comes in handy with “another fantastic product to women” as a Mary Kay salesman.

He’s the only male out of 70 beauty consultant in the area.

“I’m a novelty,” he said. “The women are very helpful and they know what they wear and what they want.”

The Rhode Island native has been living in the Huntsville/Madison area since 1980. After receiving an engineering degree, he joined the Air Force for six years as Air Police, today called security forces. He moved to the area when he took a sales engineering position.

Galipeau started his position in the chamber in March 2009, where his responsibilities include growing membership, being visible in the community and working with the city. The chamber started the annual mayor’s State of the City address, also known as Connect 2011 and the Business Expo and Kid’s Day event.

Since Galipeau and his chamber team, Felecia McInnish, manager for marketing and events and communications and Tabitha Ivey, membership specialist, have been on board, membership size has gone from 315 to around 650 members. The number of Chamber ambassadors has risen from 5 to 50.

“Working with this team has been one of the greatest joys that I’ve experienced in my 40 plus years in the workforce,” Galipeau said. “They are two best partners that I’ve ever worked with.”

The chamber’s three-fold mission of growing and retaining membership, putting on events for members and supporting local government.

“We have a vision to Invest. Connect. Grow. So if members invest in us, we then in turn help them grow their business by connecting,” he said.

Galipeau called Madison the “epicenter” of North Alabama that is “perfectly located” between the Muscle Shoals and Scottsboro to drive business in the community. Madison has 2,000 businesses and Galipeau plans to contact and invite as many of those business to join the chamber as possible.