A couple of years ago, I had the zany idea that I wanted to open a home furnishings store. It didn’t quite come from thin air: I was a graphic designer who had been unofficially studying interior design for some time, and I had recently had some success in designing the logo and interiors for a posh boutique. It was then that I began giving serious consideration to retail. The idea of moving from a business where my clients felt justified in calling me at home at midnight or six in the morning, to one where I could focus good energy on a customer experience that lasted a few minutes seemed highly desirable.

The thing was, if I was going to start a new business, it had to conform to my values. Though I wanted to open a store, I’m no fan of mindless consumerism. I was primarily interested in home furnishings because I had seen how a person’s surroundings could affect his or her mood and experience of life, but as I started looking into other aspects of that field, the ideas of healthy interiors and eco-friendly materials also started to resonate.

To offer a quick summary of what I learned, the way people furnish and decorate their homes in the modern world is quite literally sickening, both to the home itself and the world in general. Obviously, there’s the problem of all the trees cut down so people can have their nice wood furniture and flooring. But the manufacture of most paint, upholstery, rugs, bedding—basically every kind of thing people put in their homes—involves poisonous chemicals that get sprayed into the environment or dumped from factories. And then when these products come into your home, they release residual amounts of these chemicals into the air in a process called outgassing. Studies have shown that this outgassing, combined with the fumes from chemical cleaning products and other pollutants, can cause the air in your home to be five times more polluted than the air outside . . . and in some cases up to twenty times more. And there is plenty of evidence that the chemicals that make up this interior pollution are linked to health problems in people, especially children.

In order to decorate our homes, we are in essence poisoning our personal environments, as well as the natural environment.

Again and again while I conceptualized my future business, after taking all of this information to heart, the idea of health kept coming up. Healthy homes, healthy bodies, healthy families, healthy environment, healthy neighborhoods, healthy society, healthy planet. With what I was learning about manufacturing and the potential for small businesses to affect their local environments, the convergence of all of those concepts was becoming obvious.

What if I started a business that was built entirely upon those principles? Our operations would be eco-friendly, our products would be eco-friendly, our employees would receive a living wage and insurance benefits. Bringing our products home would contribute to a customer’s healthy home and body. And why not go a step further and create a place where a healthy community could flourish? I started expanding on the idea of strictly offering home furnishings and decided to put in a little café in the front of the store, that offered organic products and, possibly more importantly, a place for community to gather.

This was a business that would be all about life. I wanted to challenge people to think about what that concept meant to them, and about how their lives are interdependent upon the lives of other people and organisms on the planet. Getting a broader picture of that interdependence can be overpowering in many ways, but I wanted to show people that they could enhance the enjoyment and health they get out of their own lives while at the same time lowering their overall impact on the planet.

But anyway, that’s how bluehouse first came to life in my mind. Today, we are a seven thousand square-foot home furnishings store located near the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland and on the web at www.bluehouseLIFE.com. We sell furniture, home décor, eco-friendly hardwood and bamboo flooring, bathroom counters and sinks, linens, bedding, mattresses, pillows, body products, baby products, and all kinds of gifts . . . all of it conforming to our strict guidelines for health and sustainability. Our little café is thriving much of the time, and our furniture showroom has won two “Best of Baltimore” awards from local publications during our first year of operation.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to share with you some thoughts about running a small business in general, and the extra rewards and challenges in running this particular business in a “green” and healthy way.

After art school in the 70s, I took the road less anticipated.
Without jobs in the art education market in those years, I was thrust into the booming retail market of the early 80's selling - of all things - hifi equipment. Working my way up the corporate ladder I ended up as national sales manager for a Scottish hifi company traveling nationally and to the UK. There were many years of fantastic hands-on business experience, but little time for my original plan. After my first daughter was born, I took a little time to reshape my life. Heading back into the art field via clothing design, I designed and manufactured a line of handpainted/hand-screened children's clothing, which I marketed through wholesale shows at the Javits Center in NYC to over 200 stores nationwide. I had enough time between seasons to start a tiny, soon to be successful, private art school to teach children the way I originally wanted to. The clothing line had done very well but became a strain on the art school. I packed up the remaining stock and sent it to the World Relief Fund and saved the happy memories from those days. The school flourished and I found myself looking for a better home than our first, rented/shared art studio. Through a couple of unexpected twists in the road, it came quicker than I imagined.

The idea of forming our new company began in November of 2002 over lunch and two like-thinking friends. One was my husband, a successful media designer with 10 year experience in freelance design and teaching at a university in Germany. Mary Jo Monusky, now my other partner, had a business background in a wholesale jewelry and accessory sales in NYC. It was a perfect match and we found an antique building which needed just a little love to make it a perfect space for our venture.

The building we chose is 104 years old and sits on the river walk area of our city. Our business has three complementary businesses under one roof. artstream, LLC has a 2000 square foot gallery with our art school housed in a separate gallery area. We hold 20 classes a week in most media with a half a dozen instructors. Our main focus of our business is design, both graphic, web, and business interior design. As our small New Hampshire city is experiencing a renaissance, the idea of an art-based business is still a bit of a curiosity, but one who's time has arrived. This idea, which we have embraced and grown, with the community over the past four years. I look forward to sharing my journey, my small business perspectives and experiences with readers here at BizBox.

artstream design studios and gallery

the blog

online shop!

Small business is the engine of our economy. Each small business owner contributes horsepower. I have been a piston in this engine since 2003.

When I was asked to write about how my business began, my first reflex was to share that window of time when I officially brought the pieces together and opened the doors. But after more thought, I realized I was in business well before a traceable starting point.

The Blake Project, a brand consultancy was alive at my very first thought of it.

My proof: The ideas taxed me. I realized a high mental profit. I was confident and doubtful. The business was built and re-built many times in my mind.

Based on this, I was in business even if no one else knew it.

I have a hunch that when defined this way, many of you have also been in business much longer than the records show.

There is a story about the assembly of the nuts and bolts of my company. Let me reserve that for another time. I want to share about my key business influencer. That one major inspiration that helped spark my idea and energize its leap into the real world.

I can trace my key influencer back to my roots.

The 1970’s were not the best of times for women in business. It was very much a man’s world. Barriers were set high enough to help keep it that way. My mother, Pat, and her business partner, Ruth, were determined to scale those walls and capture their American Dream.

An Unmet Need
The setting was rural Maine, 1978. Pat was a single mother who had spent the past five years driving a school bus to support a family of four. Ruth was a nurse at a local veteran’s hospital. In small windows of time they came together to map out their vision of a company that catered to the ‘well retired’. Their idea was not a nursing home. Being able-bodied and in good health was one of the main requirements to live there. It was a very unique concept. And there was a need. If you were 96 and in good health but were unable to live alone, a nursing home was most likely your final destination. Pat and Ruth were determined to offer an alternative.

Determination
The two women pooled their funds. They still didn't have enough to buy the weathered Victorian mansion they felt would suit perfectly. So they began to search for a lender. Bank number one rejected them. Soon after bank number two followed. They began to fear that two women and a business venture did not appeal to most lenders. When two more banks rejected them they were certain of it. But with resolve and belief in their idea, they tried again and on their fifth attempt they beat the odds to become the first two women to be approved for a business loan at that institution in the State of Maine.

Implementation
Now fueled with their ideas and funding their vision could make its leap into reality. They opened a pre-cursor to what we know today as assisted living. It was aptly called The Victorian Manor.

Pat, pondering the days business. Circa 1981

Over the next decade I witnessed the challenges and rewards of small business. It’s a classic story of pioneers; some days they get arrows, others, more land.

Momentum
In 1995 they retired 10 years early having succeeded with The Victorian Manor, a construction company, a health club, a restaurant, and a business consultancy. Fittingly, their first success would create momentum for others. A natural progression when the right formula is achieved.

From those very first thoughts of The Blake Project I often referenced the evolution of Pat and Ruth’s business. How would my concept stand under similar circumstances? Would reality welcome my vision?

I side-stepped those doubts when taking inventory of what I had learned, and discovered a cliché pile with true meaning:

-Don’t be afraid of barriers. There is a way around them or over them.
-If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.
-If the answer is no, ask again, or ask someone else.
-If you’re waiting a long time for help, realize you are most likely the help that was sent.
-Believe. Most of history’s greatest achievers were called crazy...at first.
-Choose your partners wisely.
-If it’s not worth risking for, it’s probably not worth having.
-Let resistance be a motivator.

When you can, leverage the experience of your ‘roots’. They helped bring you to your starting point, and may help your vision materialize.

Gratitude
Finally, thank your key influencers whomever or whatever they may be.

www.brandingstrategyinsider.com

Joe is a leader in implementing truly integrated marketing communications (IMC). He has made it work by abolishing all agency departments (silos) and organizing in self-directed, client-centered, cross-functional teams. These teams, draw on feedback from the entire agency, approach marcom challenges from a media neutral POV and focus on generating immediate results while building the brand.

The Phelps Group is the only agency in SoCal listed on both the Advertising and PR agency charts. Its success is partly due to Joe's ongoing commitment to finding the right people and providing the resources needed to serve their clients.

Before founding the agency in 1981, Joe worked on global brands with Ayer and Grey. Prior to that he was a recording engineer and a musician. Joe lectures at graduate levels at numerous universities. His book, Pyramids Are Tombs, is recommended by America's most recognized IMC professors.

Michael C. Taylor founded Cedarcrest Capital LLC, a finance company specializing in unusual situations, in 2004. Cedarcrest is frequently a creditor when a bank or other investment company is unwilling or unable to provide capital. Michael previously worked as a bond salesman on Wall Street before founding Cedarcrest.

Andy Kruse is the co-founder of Southwest Windpower , the world’s leading producer of small (400-3000 watt) wind generators. In a garage over 20 years ago, an idea blossomed into a company that has produced over 100,000 small-scale wind machines, today found in over 120 countries.

Susan Schwake-Larochelle, owner, artist and artistic director for Artstream Studios . Their mission is to promote the visual arts in downtown Rochester and on the web through exhibition of emerging and established artists, arts education, media and graphic design, and community partnerships. In 2003 she opened artstream with two partners in a restored 100 year old building housing a full fine arts gallery promoting emerging and established artists, media/graphic design studio, and art academy in beautiful downtown Rochester right on the Cocheco river.

David Buscher is the owner of a home furnishings store located near the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland, and on the web at www.bluehouseLIFE.com. The store sells furniture, home décor, eco-friendly hardwood and bamboo flooring and more. . . all of it conforming to their strict guidelines for health and sustainability. The store's café is thriving much of the time, and the furniture showroom has won two “Best of Baltimore” awards from local publications during our first year of operation.

Derrick Daye is founder and Managing Partner of The Blake Project, a leading
brand consultancy. He has spent the past 17 years helping small and large companies design, manage and build brands that drive revenue growth through differentiated customer experiences.

Prior to launching The Blake Project, Derrick held rewarding leadership roles at Saatchi & Saatchi as well as at three other respected advertising agencies. He credits his focus on brand strategy formulation and business development experiences with his ability to align organizations with unmet customer needs.

Early in his career he spent five years sharpening his communication skills in Europe and Asia as a network radio and television broadcast journalist and host. In this role he consistently earned awards and recognition for penetrating cultural barriers and influencing the clarity of key issues with target audiences through news and entertainment programs.

His thirst for greater understanding of other robust, strategic and creative outlets led him to a public relations position with the Department of Defense in 1995 where he was involved in crisis management strategy and media relations. This experience led to his first leadership role in advertising in 1997.

Derrick co-authors the popular branding blog Branding Strategy Insider, is quoted in the business press and writes on various marketing topics for a range of industry-specific publications.

He is a member of the International Economic Development Council, has served on a number of not-for-profit boards and is the proud founder of Marketers For Charity, an organization rallying professionals for the benefit of breast cancer research and other causes. Most notably, he has worked with The White House Press Corps, the National Basketball Association, Johnson & Johnson and the United Nations.

Derrick makes his home in Tampa, Florida and Rochester, New York. He attributes his small town upbringing in the State of Maine for his strong moral compass. Derrick's passion for people, business and the brands they create has rendered him a life-long student and frequent teacher in the conversion of big ideas into real world implementation.

He can be reached at ddaye@theblakeproject.com or (888) 706-5489.

Andrew of Southwest Windpower has written about hair-raising (or perhaps hair-falling-out) cycles of raising capital and repaying debt. This is something I and bluehouse have not yet faced in quite the same way, although we have our own tumultuous relationship to the green. While I conceived of, started, and run my business—and I make all of the daily and strategic decisions—I don’t actually own it myself. A few years ago, my father (who is an extraordinary man) announced his intention to fully fund the entrepreneurial ambitions of my siblings and myself as a way of both bringing our family together and passing his legacy down to future generations. In a series of legal and financial maneuvers, we formed a family trust that in turn funded a holding company that officially owns my business along with several others launched by my brothers and their wives.

I am often asked how lucky I feel to have fallen into such an arrangement as compared to jumping through hoops for institutional funding. The short answer is “very,” although I suspect the question is enough of a gotcha that I don’t like to talk about it much. Yes, I dodged a bullet, but it’s not as if I don’t have to account for every penny that passes through my business. Indeed, I’d almost rather explain to a bank why I need money for new signage rather than have the matter scrutinized around the Thanksgiving dinner table or at my nephew’s birthday party. If a typical business should suddenly take a turn for the worse and fail, a bank can foreclose and be done with it. Humiliating, to be sure, but in my case, should the worst happen, there is no end of the earth to which I can flee from the knowledge that I’ve harmed the livelihood of my entire extended family. My extra motivation to succeed is the thought of those Thanksgivings and birthday parties if I do not.

Still, although it’s very strange for me to be making complex business decisions with the brothers who used to kick the back of my car seat or hold their finger up to my head and play “I’m not touching you,” it’s an oddly satisfying arrangement. Business is risk—daily and often unnerving risk—and there is something both soothing and thrilling about sharing that with the people who have known me since I was born.

And, well, yes, often irritating. But right nonetheless.

Capital is more than money. Capital is also ideas, creativity, and people. For small business ventures like artstream, it has been all of those things. It had to be. We felt strongly about holding all control of our business in our three way partnership and not getting into too deep of a hole at the outset.

A big part of our working capital is diversity. Each arm of our business is related to the other within the field of art. With the established art school we brought a strong client base to our emerging gallery and design studios. Existing capital was a large contact list grown over the previous nine years of my private art school. This was very helpful in introducing our new business and first exhibition when the gallery opened four years ago. My prior studio housed a small alternative gallery which I ran for four years before opening artstream. I have many contacts built through those first years and they helped build artstream’s gallery from the start. I also had done quite a bit of artist in residence work in the greater Seacoast region of NH so I had met a lot of other artists, art educators, and patrons who were interested in our new venture.

Our first exhibition was a solo show of work from a local artist whose work was established in the area. She is also an art instructor at a local college and high school, and had quite a few fans, which added to the new faces in at the grand opening reception. This ‘people based capital’ was significant for us in the early months as the work of my husband and partner, Rainer, who runs the design portion of our studio, was virtually unknown. At the grand opening and other early occasions to follow, we were able to use the opportunities to show a portfolio slide show of his past work, hand out brochures and emphasize our collateral materials were all designed in-house. Creative capital in one way - also falls under the public relations category.

Having clients already in one segment of our business allowed for growth with the same clients in other facets of our business. We have donated design work to local arts non-profits with whom we share common overall goals. In time, they have hired us for design work, as they were pleased with our company and our willingness to help them. Our community is not overly rich in the arts at the moment, but is experiencing a renaissance of the downtown which we and other arts organizations are part of. This growth excites everyone, art lovers and art newbies alike. We are always thankful to be a bit of a newsworthy “oddity” still in our community, one that is growing with us. We look forward to the day when there is enough happening downtown to support an art walk or art evening with multiple galleries participating. Until that time, we have to create our own excitement.

When we plan an event we strive to offer enough variety and other cultural tie-ins to create new audiences for our business. We have coupled with our local opera house on a few events; we have created exhibits with the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, local movement arts groups and national organizations like the Women’s Caucus for Art. We encourage local schools to bring classes to tour the gallery for different exhibitions and in turn they recognize us as an educational resource. Some of our instructors teach in the local schools. We have had a host of wonderful college interns working for us in the past four years. Many came from those tours or recommendations from teachers who have visited, pointing them in our direction for on the job experience.

Housing your business can be a huge drain on your capital. Luckily our other partner Mary-Jo was able to purchase the antique building which artstream calls home and rent it back to us for a fair market price. This was similar in some ways to the “blood money” story from David from Bluehouse. Mary Jo is our partner and our landlord. Something we would not change for the world. Her investment is the building and her capital she brings to our business is her accounting and savvy business knowledge. She is also one great schmoozer at the local business cocktail parties and through non-profit work that she has done for the community everyone she meets – meets artstream.

Raising capital can mean raising awareness for the dormant creative resources, nurturing of relationships with mutual benefits, investigate synergies and making the most of any diversity that you can champion. Discover the hidden treasures in your company, your organization and in yourself – it’s the creative capital you can’t buy.

Even though I run a complicated business that marries a brick-and-mortar eco-friendly home furnishing showroom with its Internet counterpart and a full-service natural café, I’d say what occupies most of my attention is marketing.

In a way, this is a good thing, as it forces me to put myself in the place of the consumer and look at my offerings in that light; in a way, it’s annoying because it seems like the more resources you devote to marketing, the more it requires. You can always do something a little “better” if you just put in a little more money, time, or attention. One of my great lessons has been that putting that money, time, and attention into the customer experience may pay off better than marketing in the end, but “word of mouth” as a way of generating business is the aspect over which you have the least control. It’s less nerve-wracking to know that 2,300,000 people will see your Internet ad and to base your projections on that.

The other big thing I’ve had to learn about marketing is when something is an emergency and when it isn’t. I get calls and emails every day about this-and-that “great opportunity!” for ad placement, most of which I let go by without suffering any ill effects. An ad rep’s emergency is not my emergency . . . unless I’ve already paid for space and have forgotten to send in the art, which happens all the time.

At this point, I have to confess I’m a little lost as to the best marketing strategy for bluehouse. We spent most of our budget in the first year drumming up local business, but now I have to use the same budget to continue to build and maintain local interest and introduce the bluehouse Internet store to the world. This is the quandary that attracts so much of my attention.

Adding to my dilemma is that I don’t want to be just another company shouting and jostling for attention. I guess no business owner wants to be “just another company,” but as a marketer, I must say that I often don’t approve of marketing. I don’t like the ever-encroaching sprawl of advertising into both public and private space. I don’t like that most of what’s being pushed upon a jaded public is trying to manufacture demand for useless nonsense. My entire mission in starting bluehouse was to get people to stop and think about what they were doing, about what sorts of things they were bringing into their lives.

I have always thought that the best marketing was simple and educational, and that’s the standard I’d like to maintain. I just hope that the world is still set up in a way where that sort of message can get through.

I’m supposed to write about selecting and retaining employees, an area in which I have had some good fortune, although I seemed to have stumbled into this instinctively rather than following a plan with an H.R. seal of approval. Picture it: bluehouse in November 2005, an empty shell of a space with a hastily assembled folding chairs and tables, myself and my two managers madly interviewing dozens of people in a row, trying to fill fifteen vacant positions with just a week until opening. Our styles could not have been more different. While one manager focused on intense questions regarding character the other presented an array of hypotheticals designed to reveal work ethic, I decided to prompt the candidates I interviewed to talk about their passions and the things that captured their attention; in the midst of “what would you do…” and “tell me about a time…”, I was having conversations about music, comic books, ’zines, fashion design, the environment, volunteering for assorted charitable organizations, romantic relationships gone awry, and any number of other scintillating topics.

Now, as events later revealed, I probably should have snuck one or two questions about work ethic in there, but my goal was to get to know these people as, well, people. Did I like them? Could I relate to them? Were they being genuine or in “interview” mode? Did they seem bright enough to do what I needed them to do, even with no experience? At the sign-in table by the waiting area, my partner casually observed them interacting amongst themselves. As I pondered the applications, he could tell me who was outgoing, who seemed thoughtful, who appeared impatient, who had that certain approachable spark.

I had lured all of these people down with the promise of a higher than average salary—that is, a living wage—along with benefits for full-timers. I hoped to discover signs of life typically devoid in the retail world. Did I succeed? Well, you will have to visit the little family in our downtown Baltimore location and see for yourself. I think you would discover a group of people who are close, helpful, friendly, brilliant, and perhaps a little dysfunctional.

How do you retain good employees if you’re in retail? Sadly, you don’t always. We have our share of college students working to put themselves through school before finding jobs in their field, or career salespeople who got better offers. And there were those whose energy, shall we say, was not quite the right fit for their positions. But to the extent you can, I think the key is to create a workplace where people feel appreciated on the level of the paycheck and also on the level of themselves as individuals. I always tell my employees, “I want you to create your dream job, whatever that looks like for you.” That means, yes, you have to sweep under the tables and take the trash out, but you can also bring other elements of yourself into the work setting. So we now have people organizing open mic nights for music and poetry in our café, doing video podcasts as sort of “commercials” for YouTube, researching how they can sell their homemade baby blankets in our organic baby section, and so on.

I started bluehouse after a string of soul-deadening jobs that left me desperate to keep my personal and professional lives compartmentalized, and I was afraid that my employees would have the same reaction. That they have not is something I take no small amount of pride in. It’s hard work to be a good boss. It can take a lot out of you. But it can also put a lot into you.