09/ 26/ 2007
by Emily McMackin
Uncovering what motivates the independent-business owner
What pushes an entrepreneur to take the leap into business ownership?
Whether it's a brilliant business idea, a sense of purpose or an irresistible challenge that inspires a person to start a business, it takes passion, drive and a willingness to take risks to get it off the ground. The small-business owners in this story knew little about owning a business before starting one, but that didn't stop them from foregoing conventional wisdom and relying on their instincts to make their business concepts fly. Whether filling a void in the marketplace or building a legacy for their grandchildren, these three businesses are helmed by owners who share an innovative spirit--and aren't afraid of the unknown.
If you ask Bob and Sandy Hall, owners of Port Charlotte, Fla.-based Kimmi Kakes, what they work for, they'll say cake. If you ask them whom they work for, they'll talk about their grandchildren: 18-year-old Branden, 16-year-old Kimmi and 13-year-old Seth.
No, their grandchildren don't own the company, but the Halls built the business in the hopes that they would one day.
"Our dream was that if we could pass something like this on to our kids and grandkids, it would be something we helped them do," Sandy says. "We won't be around to see Kimmi Kakes get really big, but hopefully someday they will."
The business, which sells its homemade 3-ounce flavored cakes to service stations, coffee shops, hotels and other independent distributors across central Florida, is already a family operation. Seth helps his grandmother bake and fill orders; Branden designed the company logo and helps Bob with sales and deliveries. And Kimmi, the company's namesake, is a walking advertisement for friends fond of her grandparents' cakes.
"All of the kids in town love Kimmi Kakes, and they're always asking Kimmi to bring them some," Sandy says. "She is very proud when people say, ‘Are you Kimmi?' She thinks it's great what we've done."
Not that the couple knew much about the baking business when they started five years ago. Bob owned a snack route; Sandy worked in a bakery. While preparing to sell his route, Bob met with a popular cake-brand manufacturer in North Carolina about expanding its Florida distribution. The company wasn't interested, but Bob couldn't shake the idea. With his contacts and sales background and Sandy's baking expertise, he figured they could sell their own cake, so he converted his former snack warehouse into a bakery, and Sandy began experimenting with recipes and concoctions ranging from chocolate marble to piña colada.
Relying mostly on their retirement savings for capital, they bought a used oven from a school auction and scrounged up secondhand equipment to use. Everyone in the family pitched in, working long hours and seven-day weeks to get it off the ground.
"People said we were crazy and were going to kill ourselves, but it didn't matter because it was ours," Sandy says.
Against everyone's advice, they chose to package the cake as a wedge rather than a slice, like the kind Bob's mom used to pack in his lunch. Bob had a gut feeling it would add to its marketability--and he was right.
"When you see the cake on a shelf sitting next to a slice, it looks more homemade," Sandy says.
As their distribution has grown to encompass a string of hotels and resorts in Orlando and multiple Walgreens chains across the state, their corporate competitors have tried to thwart their success by giving away free racks and products to their customers--but the Halls refuse to let such tactics intimidate them.
"We have enough confidence to believe we can make the business successful, but I don't think we'll ever come to the point where we feel like we've made it," Bob says. "Every time something goes right, I'll say to my grandson, 'I think we may have gotten into the cake business.' And he'll say, ‘But we already are in the cake business.' "
Make a Difference
Running a business is a real-life fairy tale for Phyllis Brasch Librach, owner of St. Louis, Mo.-based Sydney's Closet, an online retailer that sells formal wear for plus-sized women. Every day she gets to play the fairy godmother in a Cinderella story, helping women find dresses to flatter their shape and style.
"We give them a chance to go from sitting on the sidelines at once-in-a-lifetime events to dressing up and making a grand entrance," Brasch Librach says.
Since its launch in 2002, the business has grown steadily, attracting customers from across the country and overseas and drawing the attention of teen fashion magazines like Seventeen and CosmoGirl.
"We really make a difference in the lives of women--and that distinguishes us from the competition," she says.
It's a remarkable feat considering Brasch Librach had never sewn a stitch before starting her business. As an investigative reporter for the St. Louis Dispatch, she specialized in deadlines, not hemlines. That changed the day she took her daughter prom dress shopping.
"We never found a dress that flattered her curvy figure yet fit her sense of style, so we ended up buying fabric and having one made," Brasch Librach says. "It broke my heart. She cried; I cried. Then I got angry. I thought, 'We can't be the only mother and daughter having this experience.' "
Her research revealed that millions of women shared the same predicament, inspiring her to find a way to take the stress out of their dress-shopping experience.
To pursue her idea, Brasch Librach volunteered for the graveyard shift at work, covering tornadoes, fires and murders at night and searching stores--and the country's fashion capitals--for stylish plus-size formals by day.
"It took all of my skills as an investigative reporter to find them," says Brasch Librach, who found that most retailers either stored plus-size gowns in the basement or carried none at all.
She decided to hire stitchers to help her make them herself, initially planning to raise venture capital to fund the enterprise until she discovered that "no one wanted to invest in a company that would cater to curvy women," she says.
"A lot of people asked: What are you going to do when it fails? No one believed that a girl who wasn't a size 2 could be a prom princess."
Using her own savings, Brasch Librach took the business online to reach her targeted demographic. Demand for dresses grew so much in the first year that she took an early retirement buyout. Using that money to fuel business growth, she went from working part-time at her kitchen table to full-time in a local warehouse. Looking back, she only has one regret: not starting the business sooner.
"Being an entrepreneur is exciting, but at the same time, it's scary," she says. "I've never worked harder--but I've never been happier."
Filling a niche
A day at Elemental Analysis Inc. in Lexington, Ky., is almost like an episode of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." The company, a leading service provider of trace element analysis, receives samples related to confidential cases and uses different types of testing, from nuclear to forensic, to crack the code of their composition, detecting limits from sub-percentages to parts-per-quadrillion.
"The mystery behind some of this stuff is like what you would see on television--only it doesn't happen that fast," says Kathy Stocks, who, along with her husband, Ronald, owns EAI. "It's like helping solve a piece of a puzzle."
Being able to provide clients with a quick turnaround and the most detailed picture possible of their samples has propelled the business to more than $2.2 million a year in revenues since its inception in 2000 and distinguished it as a one-stop shop for pharmaceutical, cosmetic and utility companies, and law enforcement needing to identify trace elements.
"The companies we do business with are deep in paperwork," Stocks says. "It helps them to be able to send their sample to one lab as opposed to four or five."
Customer service was what spurred the couple to start the business in the first place. A sister company to Element Analysis Corp.--a business once owned by Ronald Stocks' father which offered the first commercial Proton Induced X-ray Emission, or PIXE, testing-- EAI was formed to give clients a broader array of testing options at a reasonable rate.
"We were watching business walk out the door that we knew we could get back if we could contract with other laboratories that offered different kinds of analysis that we didn't have," Stocks says.
"We spent two and a half years looking for laboratories that would work with us to offer discounted prices, so we could offer the service to our clients without charging an arm and a leg."
It wasn't the first business risk the couple took. After initially taking over his father's Florida-based company in the early '90s, Robert Stocks was faced with a choice: Watch the company grow stagnant or move it to a region where it could grow. Ronald convinced Kathy, who worked at a bank, to come aboard, and the two moved their family--and their business--hundreds of miles away to Lexington, Ky., so they could take advantage of a partnership with the university there.
"We mortgaged our home and moved to a place where we had no family or business connections," Stocks says. They worked countless hours to juggle the demands and spent time outside of work building relationships and establishing the business in the community. And now that the business is more profitable and stable than ever, they're still searching for ways to exceed expectations--their own and those of their customers.
"Passion is the biggest thing--You have to have the desire to start and grow your business; otherwise, you get down the road and get frustrated when things don't work the way you intended," Stocks says.
Rookie Wisdom
Whether you've been in business for five weeks or 50 years, remembering the experiences you had when you first started can keep you on the right track—no matter where the future takes you. Here are lessons the business owners in this story keep in mind:
Listen to your instincts. When you come to a crossroads in your business and the path is unclear, trust yourself. Do all the research you can, but pay attention to that nagging voice in your head. Packaging cake as a wedge seemed crazy to others in the baking industry, but it fit the vision Bob and Sandy Hall had for Kimmi Kakes. Relocating their business to a town hundreds of miles away seemed like a risky choice for EAI's Ronald and Kathy Stocks, but they felt it would rejuvenate the company—and they were right.
Stick to your vision. When business is booming and growth is good, it's easy to get distracted and lose focus. Once Sydney's Closet took off, some colleagues urged Phyllis Brasch Librach to sell more lucrative clothing like jeans and bathing suits, but sticking to her original plan proved more beneficial. "We're the experts in sizing up glamour because that's all we do," she says. "You have to decide what success means to you—and it's not always about money."
Be adaptable. Don't let setbacks demoralize you; use them as opportunities to grow and improve. When the Stocks discovered they were losing business to other laboratories, they didn't panic. Instead, they asked customers how they could serve them better. As a result, they came up with a new and even better business concept.
Stay humble. No matter how successful you become, never forget where you came from and who helped you get there. Despite the fact that they run their company, the Stocks aren't too proud to clean the bathrooms or empty the trash. The Halls use the challenges at Kimmi Kakes to demonstrate the value of hard work to their grandchildren. "We'd like to see them take the good with the bad, so one day they'll appreciate it even more," Sandy says.
