She’s Cleaning Up

Nancy Bogart was a stay-at-home mom and enjoyed making soaps, lotions, and other body products in her kitchen for family and friends. She sold them at craft shows and church every now and then.

Her husband Ron owned a small heating and air conditioning company. Before they both knew, demand for her products grew quickly and Nancy’s hobby turned into a profitable small home business. She hired two people to help with orders, but that didn’t satisfy demand very long.

On February 6th 2000, she started Country Bunny Bath & Body in Nixa, MO, just 10 miles south of Springfield. Her best friend, Angie Mc Donald, pitched in to manufacture the products. She packaged and distributed orders out of her garage while her husband served as Chief Operating Officer in addition to managing his own business.

Today, she has 38 in-house staff members and has had more than 7,000 direct sales representatives across the U.S. The Mc Donalds themselves now own their own bath and body product manufacturing company, which exclusively sells to Country Bunny.

Ron walked away from the heating and air conditioning company three years ago to become Country Bunny’s CEO.

Visit her website, https://www.countrybunnybathandbody.com/.

From Lemons, She Made LemonAid Crutches

 From her site, www.lemonaidcrutches.com, Laurie Johnson writes:

As with many innovative ideas, LemonAid Crutches™ came into existence through personal need. In August of 2002, I was in a small plane crash, which took the lives of my husband and young son. Although I survived, I was left with a severely broken leg (femur) and began a long journey of surgeries, disappointments and crutches.

Still on crutches a year after the crash, I needed some cheering up. My sister and I decided it was time to do something with my “ugly” crutches. We had them professionally painted and covered the pads with gorgeous designer fabrics, and voila! they made me smile.

During my second year on crutches, I perfected the designer crutch. Becoming my own guinea pig, I played with different colors, painting processes and fabric choices. LemonAid Crutches™ was born while I crutched around town and the idea instantly became a hit.

Selling Homes by Setting the Stage

Lori Matzke is the founder and president of Center Stage Home, a company that assists real estate agents and homeowners prepare their house for market. After introducing her services in 1999, it wasn’t long before she gained enough exposure and recognition for her work to add affiliates in major cities nationwide. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she now conducts workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Canada, recently published her first book, “HOME STAGING: Creating Buyer-Friendly Rooms to Sell Your House”, and still offers staging and consultation services in the Twin Cities Metro. Lori is a frequent contributor to the Minneapolis Star Tribune column, “Staging It,” and has been featured in numerous print and on-line publications including Realtor Magazine, CBS MarketWatch, and the Toronto Star.Her proficiency in the industry and down-to-earth appeal has allowed Lori the opportunity to appear as a guest speaker at real estate conferences, home and garden expos and in television and radio broadcasts across the country, sharing her knowledge and experience in the art of staging a home to SELL!

A Real Jewel

Kathryn Kinev has been into jewelry ever since she was a child.

By 1977 she was designing and making jewelry for friends. After working for other jewelers for several years, she started her own business, Jewel Creations, Inc., from the closet in her apartment in 1983 while attending Georgia State University in Atlanta. Only two years later she moved into a shop in the prestigious Buckhead area of Atlanta where she stayed for over 15 years.

She really does do it all: designs, appraisals, and repairs, alloys her own metals, draws her own gold wire, and weaves her own gold mesh.

She is also one of the very rare jewelers who uses granulation, an ancient and time-consuming technique of applying tiny spheres of gold to a surface.

Though it is not her main activity, she also has exceptional skill at repairing jewelry. It is not unusual for another jeweler to come to her with a particularly tough repair job.

Hair Comes the Bride – Unique Wedding Hair Styling

 A Note from Gina Ludwing, owner of Hair Comes the Bride:

“I started Hair Comes the Bride in 1996 after the birth of my son, Tyler.  I always loved doing up-dos, styling hair and doing makeup.  After a short time, I became the lead makeup artist in the Laguna Hills salon where I worked.  I also began getting referred all of the weddings, proms and special occasions.

“The five years that I worked in a salon before starting Hair Comes the Bride were enough to know that my true calling was special occasion styling and makeup. 

“I have done celebrity weddings as well as working in television, commercials and photo shoots in the past but I wanted to find something more consistent in which I could use my talents.  I soon realized that there were a very small number of companies that specialized in wedding hair and makeup.  That is when I decided to start Hair Comes the Bride. 

“After only one season of doing weddings on my own, I realized that I had found my passion.  I absolutely loved what I was doing and I began to quickly book up.  I was soon turning weddings down, so, I began to search for stylists that could help me out.  I realized that Hair Comes the Bride had begun to build a reputation within the wedding industry and it was important that I find stylists that could live up to that standard.  I quickly realized that in order to maintain a certain level of integrity and standard in our work, I was going to need to train stylists to do Hair Comes the Bride’s style of hair and makeup.  We train each and every stylists that comes to work for us, no matter what level of experience they have.  I feel that this allows me to maintain the level of standards and consistency that we have been come to be known by.  

“In 2000, about fours years after I began the business, I decided to bring in a small selection of accessories to offer our brides including a line of hairpins and headpieces that I myself, designed.  The response was overwhelming.  In 2002 we opened the bridal boutique at Hair Comes the Bride in Laguna Niguel.  I have always been a perfectionist and I believe that I have carried over that perfectionism to our boutique. 

“I am proud to say that my designs have since been sold to brides throughout the world and carried in bridal boutiques throughout the United States.  Over the past year, Hair Comes the Bride has also been recognized as one of the leading online sellers of hairpins and wedding accessories.  Last  year, we attended an invitation only “In Style Weddings Magazine” bridal show in Dallas to show off Hair Comes the Bride’s unique line of accessories.

“This year, we are proud to announce the opening of our second location in Beverly Hills.

“I continue to oversee every aspect of Hair Comes the Bride to maintain the high standards on which we have built our reputation.  I love doing hair and makeup and although I am busy with many other aspects of the business (as well as taking care of my two young boys), I still make time to do special request weddings. 

“I truly love weddings and I love every aspect of what I do.  I hope that this shows in my business and in the services and products that we provide.”

Game, Set, Match – Entrepreneur Wins Big!

 

From Startup Journal: 

Caryl Parker is a weekend tennis enthusiast in San Mateo, Calif., who spent 16 years calling on customers for International Business Machines Corp. Eventually that stopped being fun, and it was incompatible with raising four children, so she left the work force for nearly a decade. But she wanted to get back, so last year she launched a tennis-equipment company in her dining room.

Ms. Parker targeted a tiny but lucrative market: the sticky “overgrips” that some tennis players wrap around their racket handles. Overgrips cost a few cents to make, yet they retail for about $2 each. Full of naïve optimism about her prospects, Ms. Parker hoped to turn a drab-looking product into a fashion accessory that might catch the public’s fancy.

Getting started, the 48-year-old Ms. Parker made plenty of blunders. A Taiwanese supplier sold her thousands of overgrips that were too slippery. Her monthly cellphone bill rocketed to $900 because she didn’t switch to a suitable calling plan. And her piecework assembly crew — her husband and four kids — briefly threatened to strike in a pay dispute.

Then, this past spring, everything clicked. Her Hawaiian-print overgrips became a surprise hit at dozens of tennis shops around the country. A new partner helped fix production snags. Now Ms. Parker’s company, HipGrips, is ringing up sales of at least $15,000 a month, while operating expenses are just half that amount.

Making Jam Stirs Up Some Success

cmbsweets was born on a foggy San Francisco morning in a studio apartment sandwiched between the Mission and Twin Peaks.

When Carolina Braunschweig came home from the farmer’s market loaded with a bushel of strawberries, she dipped a few in her morning yogurt. She ate a few more in the afternoon. She gave a basket to her neighbors, and brought a few more to a friend’s house for a barbeque. But there’s only so much a single girl can do with too many strawberries. So she did what any other sensible girl might: grabbed the sugar, one very big pot and a handful of recipes, and out came the first bath of cmbsweets’ jam. Her friends each got a jar; she passed a few on to her unsuspecting coworkers and then brought a batch over to a certain 16th street bar.

The crowd went wild. They wanted more.

Soon Carolina was using that same big pot to cook up apricots and figs and peaches and raspberries and began selling her jam all over town. Now, a year-and-a-half later, cmbsweets’ line of all-natural jams, jellies and sweets includes a dozen flavors — from pomegranate jelly to kiwi-lime-ginger preserves to olallieberry jam— and is available at markets across the country.

While cmbsweets has grown out of Carolina’s studio apartment, its homemade style and flavor hasn’t changed. The company uses only locally grown seasonal fruits, scouring farmers’ markets throughout Northern California for small family farms that offer the freshest, tastiest produce.

cmbsweets’ strawberries, for example, come from Gizdich Ranch in Watsonville. Vince Gizdich’s family has been farming the same piece of land for three generations. The best fruit makes the best jam, and Gizdich’s berries are so good that Sunset Magazine named cmbsweets’ strawberry jam “The Best of the West” in June 2006.

Twin Hill Organic Farms in Sebastapol supplies the fujis for the apple-honey butter, and every batch is sweetened with Wildflower honey produced by Eggman Family Farms in Terra Bella. Kashiwase Farms grows California’s plumpest apricots. cmbsweets adds a touch of almond extract and a bit of sugar to create a jam that tastes as fresh as the fruit off the tree.

All of cmbsweets’ products are made with fruit, sugar and lemon juice— nothing else. Much of the fruit is organic. There’s no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. The idea is to make fancy California food without the fancy California food price.

You can visit this great jam-maker online at www.cmbsweets.com.

Heather Turner: Web Developer

from her website:

Heather Turner is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and has spent over 20 years in the restaurant business. She trained under one of the PBS Series “Great Chefs of America”, Chef Eve Labbe at 4 Star acclaimed restaurant, Le Cheval D’or and has been the Executive Chef at Bellini’s Restaurant, The Cliff House at Stowe Mt. Resort and Harvest Market in Northern Vermont and at The Olde Inn on Cape Cod.

In 2003, Heather decided to make a major career change and start her own business, she had a personal background in photography and the fine arts which she wanted to put to good use.

After developing several websites for friends, it was suggested to her that she try it as a business undertaking. Thus Forfeng Designs was established in November of 2003 as a creative and alternative outlet to the restaurant industry.

She has provided design services for Bed & Breakfasts, Restaurants, Spas, Sailing Charter Companies and a wide variety of other industries. she has taken existing sites and completely redesigned them and has brought brand new sites into existence.

Meet Audrey Liles

 From her “about” page at www.AudreyLiles.com:

I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from Pikesville High School in 1994.  After high school, I attended the University of Maryland College Park and graduated in 1998 with a degree in elementary education with a concentration in mathematics.

After college I moved to San Diego, California.  I worked for several companies in the field of sales and marketing.  During this time I also completed a certification in web design as well as software programs such as Adobe, Macromedia and Goldmine.

In 2001 I started my first company, Real Personal.  Real Personal was a speed dating company that also specialized in club promotion and singles parties.
In 2004 i started Extreme Marketing San Diego.  As owner of Extreme Marketing, I aid small businesses in their efforts to create a presence online.  My main specialization is in SEO (search engine optimization) – building a website around ensuring top search engine ranking.

In addition, I am the owner of Authentic Only.  Authentic Only is an online boutique located at www.authenticonly.com.  My store offers brand name, boutique clothing for babies, children and juniors as well as some for men and women. 

I have also been working toward the completion of a dual master’s degree including an MBA and a master’s of technology through the University of Maryland’s correspondence program.  I hope to complete this program within the next few years.

Most importantly, on September 26, 2003, my son was born.  He is by far, my greatest accomplishment.

Must…Have…Chocolate!

Joan Coukos’ transition from international banker to artisanal chocolatier began when she found a set of chocolate molds at an antique market in Belgium.“I felt like I was on the verge of some discovery,” said Coukos. “I couldn’t put them down.”

She began gobbling books on chocolate and making chocolate once a month to bring to work. When she left banking in the fall of 2001, chocolate became her full-time job. She went to food networking events and chocolate trade shows. Banks and headhunters called with job leads, but she turned them down — she was up to her elbows in chocolate. Then, in 2003, she started her New York-based company, Chocolat Moderne.

It’s a dream so many people have: Chuck your day job and do the thing you’re most passionate about. A handful of those who leave cubicles to be entrepreneurs succeed wildly, such as handbag maker Kate Spade, who quit Mademoiselle magazine to start her business and now has 15 retail stores and 315 employees.

Coukos, whose chocolates are sold online and in upscale food stores, is energized by entrepreneurship.

“I wake up in the morning and I wish I was immediately at work,” Coukos said. “I can’t wait to get here.”

Visit Joan’s website here.