Little did Lindsay Gaskins know that by playing family card games and Scrabble matches with her grandmother growing up, she was training for a career.
"I was definitely competitive, to a fault," Gaskins said, breaking into a smile.
Gaskins, a 1995 graduate of Ipswich High School, is chief executive officer of Marbles: the Brain Store. She opens the chain's newest store Saturday at her hometown mall, the Northshore Mall in Peabody.
Marbles is a retailer of games, puzzles, computer software and books that strengthen and stimulate the brain.
Simply put, Gaskins said, the products at Marbles keep people from losing their marbles.
Before Marbles will carry a product, it is looked over by a brain specialist to ensure it is challenging and beneficial to the brain in some way, as well as being fun.
Employees, called "brain coaches," are trained so they know how to play or use every product in the store. From a DVD series on remembering people's names to Quixo, a strategy game based on tic-tac-toe, every product in the store is open and available for customers to try. Of course, among the inventory is a deluxe version of Scrabble, the word game where Gaskins got her start.
Gaskins remembers the warning her father gave her to encourage her to wear a bike helmet as a child: Your brain is the only one you've got.
"It activates everything you do. You've got to give it a little love," Gaskins said. "... Having challenging, stimulating things is a good thing."
Gaskins, 34, lives in Chicago, where she opened the first Marbles store in 2008.
Along with the Peabody location, Marbles is opening stores in Natick and Braintree, as well as in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. The retailer's nine existing locations are in the Chicago and Minneapolis areas.
The Marbles store at the Northshore Mall will employ six or seven people at first and expand to a staff of 10 or 12 during the holiday season.
Gaskins, whose parents, Stephanie and Darius Gaskins, still live in Ipswich, studied economics and played basketball at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
After college, she coached basketball and taught high school economics. She later switched careers and worked at Sears as a buyer and member of their corporate strategy team.
Her idea for Marbles was born out of — what else? — a brainstorming session.
The original concept had a focus on the baby boomer generation and the realm of neuroplasticity — keeping the brain sharp as you age. But Gaskins soon found a "sandwich generation" was shopping at Marbles, buying for their baby boomer parents but also for themselves and their children.
Drawing from her basketball experience, Gaskins says she's learned from the bumps and challenges along the way since opening her first store three years ago.
"There are a lot of naysayers," she said of going into business during a bad economy. "It's a hard time to be very optimistic. But the reaction from our customers has made us want to respond. ... We wanted to be aggressive. When (Marbles) was looking like a good concept, test and learn quickly."
Staff writer Bethany Bray can be reached at bbray@salemnews.com and on Twitter @SalemNewsBB.
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