Week%2013%20-%20Female%20and%20Black%20Entrepreneurship%20Readings.pdf

They may not be celebrated in history books, but their contributions to the world have greatly impacted our society. The legendary women entrepreneurs on our list have constantly pushed the standards of their fields to leave the world a better place. These women are all different, yet they share similar stories of triumph in the face of hardship. Some were selected because their invention changed the way we live, while others were chosen for carving out a better path for women. Debbi Fields, founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies, explains entrepreneurial motivation: "Entrepreneurship has no age or time limits?it thrives on hope and inspiration. Those who choose to participate can only make the world a better place." And that's exactly what these entrepreneurs have done. Thanks to the accomplishments of the women on our list, today's women-owned firms are among the fastest-growing firms in the nation-- women start businesses at twice the rate of all companies. About 7.7 million firms are majority-owned by women (51 percent or more), employing about 7.1 million people and generating $1.1 trillion in sales, according to the Center for Women's Business Research. 1739 Eliza Lucas Pinckney 'Dying' to Make a Difference She's known as America's first important agriculturalist for introducing blue indigo dye into continental North America. Eliza Lucas was born in Antigua, an island in the West Indies, in 1722. She attended a finishing school in London, where she developed a love for botany. When she was still young, her family moved to the U.S., and her father acquired three plantations. At the age of 16, Pinckney took over the plantations near Charles Town, in the Province of South Carolina, after her mother died and her father, a British military officer, returned to the West Indies. After realizing that the growing textile industry was creating a need for new dyes, Pinckney began making a high-quality blue indigo dye in 1739. Her creation was a success: Indigo soon ranked second to rice as a South Carolina export crop. She went on to produce flax, hemp, silk and figs. Pinckney died in 1793, but her legend lives on. She became the first woman inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1989. 1766 Mary Katherine Goddard Spreading the Word This entrepreneur's accomplishments have already been noted as a part of American history. Mary Katherine Goddard grew up in New London, Connecticut, before moving to Providence, Rhode Island, with her mother in 1762. Her famous firsts began when she became the first woman publisher in America in 1766. In 1775, Goddard became the first American woman postmaster in Baltimore, Maryland. But she is most famous for printing the first copy of the Declaration of Independence that included the names of all the 16 Legendary Women Entrepreneurs Thanks to their passion and determination, these outstanding women have made and continue to make a difference in our daily lives. By: Kristin Chessman | 6/19/2008 Page 1 of 6Business & Small Business 7/18/2008http://www.womenentrepreneur.com/print/article/2866.html signers. Goddard remained postmaster until she was replaced in 1789, then continued to work as a printer and bookseller until her death in 1816. 1875 Lydia Pinkham The Ann Landers of the 1800s Some would call her the Ann Landers or Dr. Ruth of the 1800s. In 1875, Lydia Estes Pinkham of Lynn, Massachusetts, converted her herbal home remedies into a big business by skillfully marketing her products toward women and educating them about health issues. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound became one of the best-known patent medicines of the 19th century. Pinkham was deemed a crusader for women's health in an age when women's needs weren't being met by the medical community. Cooper Laboratories bought the company in 1968, though pills and a liquid stamped with Pinkham's name are still available at some drugstores. 1905 Madam C.J. Walker Carving the Path for Women Entrepreneurs Considered one of the 20th century's most successful women entrepreneurs, Madam C.J. Walker built her empire out of nothing. Her parents were former slaves, and she was orphaned at the age of 7. In 1905, she created Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and healing formula. Walker had a personal connection to the product since she suffered from a scalp ailment that caused her to lose most of her hair. She eventually expanded her business to Central America and the Caribbean. By 1917, Walker held one of the first national meetings of businesswomen in Philadelphia, the Madam C.J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America convention. Walker's hard work and perseverance carved a path for women entrepreneurs, the African-American hair-care and cosmetics industry, and the African-American community as a whole. 1909 Elizabeth Arden Making Over America She brought makeup from the stage to everyday life and slowly developed a global empire. Elizabeth Arden, born Florence Nightingale Graham in Woodbridge, Ontario, moved to New York at the age of 30 to pursue her dream of building a cosmetics corporation. There she began working with a chemist to create a beauty cream, something new for the cosmetics industry at that time. After traveling to Paris in 1912, Arden became the first person to introduce the concept of eye makeup to American women and offered the first makeovers in her 5th Avenue salon. Arden died in 1966, but her brand became as well-known across the U.S. as Singer sewing machines and Coca-Cola. At the end of its fiscal year in June 2007, the company reported $1.1 billion in net sales, up more than Page 2 of 6Business & Small Business 7/18/2008http://www.womenentrepreneur.com/print/article/2866.html 18 percent from $955 million in 2006. 1910 Coco Chanel Revolutionizing Fashion One Accessory at a Time "May my legend prosper and thrive. I wish it a long and happy life." Coco Chanel's legend certainly has lived on since she died in 1971. At the time of her death, Chanel's fashion empire brought in more than $160 million a year. The fashionista, born in Saumur, France, opened her first shop in 1910 selling only women's hats. In 1921, the company introduced Chanel No. 5, the first perfume to be sold worldwide. From there, the name Chanel became known across the world. Today, Chanel creations continue to attract a wealthy, celebrity-filled consumer base. Chanel will forever be associated with her little back dress, her timeless suits, shoes, purses and jewelry. As Christian Dior said, "With a black pullover and 10 rows of pearls, she revolutionized fashion." 1932 Olive Ann Beech Skyrocketing to Success Olive Ann Beech co-founded Beech Aircraft Corp. in Wichita, Kansas, alongside her husband, Walter, at the height of the Depression in 1932. Together the Beeches grew the business from 10 employees to 10,000. Two hundred seventy of their Beech Model 17 Staggerwings were manufactured for the U.S. Army during World War II. But after Walter died suddenly from a heart attack in 1950, Olive Ann became president and CEO of the company. During her nearly 20 years in charge, she transformed the company into a multimillion-dollar aerospace corporation. Olive Ann retired in 1968 but continued to serve on the board of directors until 1982, just two years after Raytheon Corp. purchased Beech Aircraft. Beech became the company's first chairman emeritus before dying at home in Wichita in 1993. Beech Aircraft Corp. had a lasting impact on general aviation, producing some of the most popular aircraft of the 20th century. 1933 Ma Perkins Mother of the Airwaves She's a radio legend who captured the hearts of Americans with her kindness and down-to-earth point of view. Actress Virginia Payne brought the character "Ma Perkins," also known as "America's mother of the air," to life in more than 7,000 episodes of her radio soap opera. Born in Cincinnati, Payne made her radio debut at the age of 23 when the show premiered on a Cincinnati radio station in 1933. The character of Ma Perkins was a self-sufficient widow who owned and managed a lumber yard and offered her homespun advice to all those who sought help. The show ran on NBC and CBS until 1960, and Payne played the title role over the show's entire span. Payne died in 1977, 11 years before she and her alter ego, Ma Perkins, were inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. Page 3 of 6Business & Small Business 7/18/2008http://www.womenentrepreneur.com/print/article/2866.html 1946 Estée Lauder Building a Beautiful Global Enterprise Estée Lauder not only made the world a more beautiful place, she also left behind a billion-dollar legacy. Born Josephine Esther Mentzer in 1908 in the borough of Queens, New York, Lauder gained merchandising experience working in her father's hardware store. But it was her chemist uncle's influence that led to her future business ventures. In 1946, Lauder founded The Estée Lauder Company and began selling skin-care products developed by her uncle to beauty salons and hotels. Her talent for sales led her to her own counter at New York City's Saks Fifth Avenue in 1948, followed by Neiman Marcus in 1950. The company opened its first international account at Harrods in London in 1960. Lauder's innovative marketing techniques helped spread her brand name worldwide. Over the years, Lauder and her team of executives added new brands to the company's portfolio, including Aramis, Clinique, Prescriptives, Origins and MAC. Lauder died in 2004, but the company continues to succeed: The Estée Lauder Company is now a global enterprise that exceeds $7 billion in annual sales. 1950 Brownie Wise The Planner Behind the Party Her knack for sales, charm and ambition helped launch a product as common to most American kitchens as forks and knives. Wise was a single mom in 1939 when she got her lucky break: After selling Stanley Home Products in the early 1950s, she realized that Tupperware would be sold more effectively at home parties than at department stores. Wise's "party plan" marketing system began outselling the stores, and that's when Tupperware's inventor, Earl Tupper, took notice and hired Wise as vice president of the company. In 1958, Tupper fired Wise after the press suggested that she was the key to Tupperware's success. Wise died in 1992, but her marketing tactic lives on to this day-- companies such as Mary Kay Cosmetics and Cookie Lee jewelry have followed in her footsteps by adopting the party-plan marketing method to sell their own products. 1951 Lillian Vernon Mail-Order Madness Before the company went private in 2003, Lillian Vernon's empire was worth more than $238 million. Born Lillian Menasche in Leipzig, Germany, in 1929, Vernon came to the U.S. in 1937 when the Nazi threat intensified. In 1951, she decided to start a mail-order business named for her Mount Vernon, New York, home. After a second divorce the 1990s, she took Vernon as her surname. Vernon used $2,000 of her wedding gift funds to buy a variety of matching purses and belts, and placed an ad in Seventeen magazine. Soon, $32,000 in orders came flooding in. Vernon published her first catalog in 1956, offering personalized combs, blazer buttons, collar pins and cuff links. By 1970, Lillian Vernon Corp. hit $1 million in sales. The company expanded its items to encompass holiday décor, gifts, household items, fashion accessories and children's products. After 51 years as CEO, the personalized gifts pioneer stepped down in 2002. The company, which filed for bankruptcy protection in February, is being acquired by Current USA Inc. for $15.8 million. 1959 Ruth Handler Barbie: Creating an American Icon With the creation of the Barbie doll, Ruth Handler has changed the way little girls play and dream, and has forever left her stamp on Page 4 of 6Business & Small Business 7/18/2008http://www.womenentrepreneur.com/print/article/2866.html American culture. Handler came up with the idea of creating a doll that looked more like an adult after noticing that her daughter preferred to play with paper dolls that looked like adults. Although her husband didn't think the idea would sell, Handler debuted Barbie (her daughter's nickname) at a New York toy fair in 1959. Handler and her husband, Elliot, were already selling dollhouse furniture and other toys through their company, Mattel, based out of their Hawthorne, California, garage. Within five years, Mattel became a Fortune 500 company. In 1967, Handler became president of Mattel Inc., a position she stayed in until 1974. Her legacy lives on today, and Barbie brings in more than $1 billion a year for Mattel. 1972 Martha Stewart The Final Word on Fine Living She's been named one of the "50 Most Powerful Women" twice by Fortune magazine and has made Forbes magazine's "Forbes 400" list. Born in 1941 in Jersey City, New Jersey, Martha Stewart channeled her passion for cooking and stylish living into a multimedia empire. Through her magazine, Martha Stewart Living, her books, television show, website, newspaper column, radio show and product lines, Stewart has become a force to be reckoned with in every form of media she has entered into. Despite Stewart's five-year legal battle after being convicted of insider trading, she has proved to be the ultimate comeback success story. Recent initiatives include the Martha Stewart Crafts line and the Martha Stewart Collection of home merchandise at Macy's department stores. This year she introduced a co-branded food line at Costco and a co-branded floral, plant and gift basket program, Martha Stewart for 1-800-Flowers.com. 1976 Dame Anita Roddick A Business With a Conscience Dame Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, became interested in environmental activism at an early age through her world travels. What began as a way of living has emerged into a business with more than 2,100 stores and more than 77 million customers. In 1976, Roddick opened the doors to her first shop in Brighton, England. What sets The Body Shop apart from other stores offering similar bath and hygiene products has been Roddick's commitment to running a company dedicated to the pursuit of social and environmental change. The Body Shop has established community trade relationships in more than 20 countries. Last month, it announced a campaign with MTV to raise HIV and AIDS awareness among those under age 25. The Body Shop was purchased by the L'Oreal Group in 2006, but remains independently run. Roddick and her husband stepped down as co-chairmen of the company in 2002, but she continued to consult until her death last year from a brain hemorrhage at age 64. 1977 Mrs. (Debbi) Fields The Smell of Sweet Success She's proof that absolutely anyone can make her dream business a reality. Debbi Fields, a young mother with no business experience whatsoever, opened her first cookie store in Palo Alto, California, in 1977. At the age of 20, Fields was able to persuade a bank to finance Mrs. Fields Chocolate Page 5 of 6Business & Small Business 7/18/2008http://www.womenentrepreneur.com/print/article/2866.html Chippery. Despite critics, she garnered worldwide acceptance as the premier chain of cookies and baked goods. The company was acquired in 1996 by a Greenwich, Connecticut-based investment firm, Capricorn Holdings. Fields went on to author several cookbooks, host a weekly program called "Great American Desserts" on PBS and sit on various boards, including the board of Outback Steakhouse Inc. in Tampa, Florida. Now known as Debbie Fields Rose, she lives in Memphis with her second husband, Michael Rose. 1984 Oprah Winfrey The Multimedia Maven She's a media queen, and she reaches an estimated 49 million viewers a week through TV alone. Oprah Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, in 1954 and lived in poverty while growing up. Despite a dysfunctional upbringing, Winfrey eventually received a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, where she studied communications and worked at a local radio station on the side. Winfrey got her big break in Chicago in 1983 when she began hosting a morning talk show. Within months, The Oprah Winfrey Show replaced Donahue as the highest-rated talk show in Chicago, and from there, her career skyrocketed. Today she not only serves as supervising producer and host of The Oprah Winfrey Show, taped in Chicago, but Winfrey is also the founder of her own magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine and women's lifestyle website, Oprah.com. Oprah's Angel Network has raised more than $70 million and given 100 percent of donations to nonprofit organizations worldwide. Her production company, Harpo Productions Inc., created another daytime hit, Dr. Phil, in 2002. There's more--Oprah is the co-founder of Oxygen Media, which operates a 24-hour cable television network for women. She also produces Oprah & Friends on XM Satellite Radio. In January, Oprah announced plans to launch the Oprah Winfrey Network--OWN--in the second half of 2009 on the Discovery Health Channel. From Broadway producer to actress to philanthropist, there seems no limit to what Oprah can do. Copyright © 2008 Entrepreneur.com, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy Page 6 of 6Business & Small Business 7/18/2008http://www.womenentrepreneur.com/print/article/2866.html How I Did It: Bobbi Brown, Founder and CEO, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics In New York in the excessive 1980s, Bobbi Brown made it big by pushing moderation. She became makeup artist to the stars by introducing a palette of natural hues--and along the way became a star herself, with her name on a global brand. From: Inc. Magazine, November 2007 | By: Bobbi Brown As told to Athena Schindelheim Bobbi Brown became a name in the cosmetics business by pushing moderation. In the 1980s, when look-at-me colors, stark contours, and shiny red lips were in fashion, Brown designed cosmetics to highlight a woman's natural look. She had moved to New York City in 1980 with a degree in theatrical makeup and a beginner's portfolio. Before the decade was done, she'd hustled her way from freelance makeup artist at magazine shoots to product designer with her name behind a global brand. In 1995, Estée Lauder (NYSE:EL) bought Bobbi Brown Cosmetics (the sale price wasn't disclosed, but Lauder reported that the $74.5 million it invested that year was principally on the acquisition), and Brown stayed in an active role. After some setbacks, the brand is thriving again. Now 50, Brown recently opened the first freestanding Bobbi Brown retail store, with a makeup artistry school in the back, and is at work on her fifth book. Being five feet tall, the teeniest of all my friends, made me a little more self-conscious and insecure about the way I look. Makeup was something I could do to make myself look prettier. Like any little girl, my makeup style is the opposite of my mother's. Her's was very '60s, sexy, Twiggy, mod. Mine was very Ali MacGraw in Love Story. I was never directed in school. Nothing really got my attention. After six months at the University of Wisconsin and a year at the University of Arizona, I came back and I told my mom I wanted to drop out. She said, "Pretend today is your birthday and you could do anything you want." I thought, and I said, "I would love to go to Marshall Field's and play with makeup." She said, "I'm sure somewhere there's a college where you could study theatrical makeup." A friend of my dad's told me about Emerson College in Boston. I always say that when I found Emerson, I found myself. I moved to New York in 1980, a year after I graduated. One of the best things I had going for me was that I was so naive. I never even thought of not being able to do it. Once I unpacked, I looked up makeup in the phone book. Photographers. Modeling agencies. I had a pretty amateurish portfolio of my makeup work from college--which I can't believe I had the guts to show people. Half of the models were myself. Makeup was really extreme in the '80s--white skin and red lips and contouring. I loved more of the healthy, natural, simple skin. I really think I helped the natural revolution. Around 1988, I was doing a shoot for Mademoiselle. We went to all of these hip downtown places, and one of them was Kiehl's pharmacy, where I met a chemist. I told him I just hated most of the lipsticks on the market. I wanted it to be creamy and not dry, to stay on a long time, to not have any odor at all, and to be colors that look like lips. He said, "I'll make it for you." I mixed a taupe eye pencil, a blush--there was not a lipstick in there--and I sent the swatch to him. "Brown" is currently in my line and my No. 1 selling lipstick. And that's how we started. Page 1 of 2How I Did It: Bobbi Brown, Founder and CEO, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics | Printer-friendly... 7/30/2008http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071101/how-i-did-it-bobbi-brown-founder-and-ceo-bobbi... Research didn't interest me. I wanted the texture, the color, and the smell. I thought, "Wow. If I could make a collection of 10 colors, I can't imagine a woman needing any other color." No fuchsia or acid orange, but wearable colors that don't look like they scream when a woman walks into a room. The beauty editor of Glamour magazine wrote maybe three lines about this thing I was doing, with my phone number. We got bombarded with orders. I guess that's when I needed to get serious and get a partner. Rosalind Landis had hired me a year before, at her PR firm, to talk about how you could use eye shadows. We went out to dinner one night--Roz, her husband, Ken, who was in the cosmetics industry, and my husband, who is a business attorney. It turns out Ken's family had moved to Florida and bought this house. The weirdest thing: They bought it from my mother. We started the company together with $10,000. I was at a dinner party and I said to this woman, "What do you do?" She said, "I'm the cosmetics buyer at Bergdorf Goodman." I told her about my lipsticks and she said, "We have to take them." Later they said they couldn't take us. They had too much going on that season. I remember my stomach dropping when I got the message. I was at a photo shoot for Saks and telling the creative directors and art directors about this new line, and they said, "Oh, my God. We want it." I called Bergdorf back and said, "That's too bad, but don't worry, because Saks wants it." Bergdorf called me back 10 minutes later and said, "Uh-uh. We're going to take it." I never even went to the right people at Saks. Now I know, that's called bluffing. Customers started coming. People said, "You have to do lip pencils. You have to do blush." Magazines were asking me to do shoots where I was actually photographed. I was even being quoted about other things. They started treating makeup artists as celebrities. Before Lauder came knocking we had two big offers we turned down. When Lauder bought M.A.C. in 1994, I was bummed. Then Frederic Fekkai said Leonard Lauder wanted to meet me. We sat on Leonard's deck overlooking Central Park. He said, "We want to buy you because you are beating us in all the stores, and what you've done is amazing, and you remind me of my mother when she started." He loves an entrepreneur. I sold the company because Leonard said, "I want you to keep doing what you're doing." He has never moved from that position. At the same time, Roz and I were always 50-50, and it was a struggle. It was a successful relationship, but we butted heads regularly. Lauder brought her in corporately to help work on new acquisitions. And then eventually she left the company. At Estée Lauder, our business was flat for a while. Things we were doing were being knocked off. They would call knockoffs "Essentially Brown" instead of "Bobbi Brown Essentials." I had lunch with the CEO, Fred Langhammer, who basically said, "There's a problem because you are not setting yourself apart. Blah, blah, blah." I said, "You want to know what I would do? First of all, move out of the GM Building. Move downtown into a cool loft. Put in my head of marketing, Maureen Case, as president. And completely open, change the culture." So we moved to SoHo. Our products became a little more fun and fresh. Our advertising photographs were more editorial, like we were working for a magazine. A regular brand would never do an advertisement with smashed lipsticks. Now you see it all the time. We were one of the first brands to regularly use black models and show them as brides. Once we moved downtown, the numbers started vastly improving. We hit half a billion at the end of 2006. For a kid that never got better than a D in math! How did this happen? My favorite aunt thinks it's really funny that I've become a hero to women, and all I do is tell them to take blush and smear it on their cheeks. She says, "I could have told people that." Copyright © 2008 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved. Inc.com, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195. Page 2 of 2How I Did It: Bobbi Brown, Founder and CEO, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics | Printer-friendly... 7/30/2008http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071101/how-i-did-it-bobbi-brown-founder-and-ceo-bobbi... The Get Ahead Guide: Erin McKenna Makes the Best Cupcakes in New York City Now she wants to go national. How fast can she grow? From: Inc. Magazine, July 2008 | By: Aviva Yael Walk into BabyCakes NYC, a vegan bakery in New York City, and you feel as if you have entered a sweets shop right out of Valley of the Dolls. The place is packed with Nancy Sinatra records, Pyrex-style plates, and other '60s memorabilia. But though the vibe is decidedly mod, the business is very 2008. BabyCakes sells gluten-free cupcakes, brownies, cookies, and pastries, made with ingredients such as coconut oil and bean flour and topped with agave-nectar frosting. New York named BabyCakes' cupcake the city's best in 2006, and founder Erin McKenna has been featured on Martha Stewart's show. A second BabyCakes store will open this fall in Los Angeles. The founder: McKenna, 32, grew up in San Diego, the 10th of 12 children in her family. A few years ago, she was working as a fashion assistant at Budget Living when she was found to have wheat allergies. Unable to find a vegan bakery that could satisfy her sweet tooth, she decided to start her own, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Her friends in the fashion world helped her generate buzz. Wendy Mullin of Built by Wendy, a trendy clothing label, designed BabyCakes' uniforms, and Earnest Sewn, a hip denim line, is partnering with McKenna to share costs as both businesses expand to L.A. The numbers: Founded in late 2005 with $85,000 in seed capital, BabyCakes NYC broke even after only seven months. Last year, sales hit $690,000. This year, the company will gross $1.2 million, according to McKenna, with gross profit of $497,000 and net income of $100,000. That's pretty good, given that, as with most food businesses, BabyCakes' markup on specific items is low. Each cupcake, for example, costs $2 to produce and retails for $3. Next year, with a second store open in Los Angeles, McKenna projects sales of $1.8 million. The market: Some 12 million Americans suffer from food allergies, according to the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, and many of them choose a vegetarian or vegan diet. Sales of vegetarian foods hit $1.2 billion in 2006. Vegan cooking is growing in popularity, too. To capitalize on these trends, Kraft (NYSE:KFT) and Kellogg (NYSE:K) market products geared toward people with food allergies, and Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFMI) dedicates ample space in many stores to a line of gluten-free baked goods. Challenges and opportunities: "Right now, I only want to focus on growing my business into a brand," says McKenna. That may be easier said than done: There are at least eight other "Babycakes" bakeries in the U.S., including one near L.A. that also sells vegan products. McKenna has been aggressive for a baker when it comes to protecting intellectual property. Each employee signs nondisclosure and noncompete agreements that are good for three years from the date of hire. "I knew from the moment I had the idea for the business that I had better talk to a lawyer," she says. Rising food costs are another concern. McKenna works with specialized ingredients that are often provided by small, independently owned suppliers, so her costs are pretty high. The more stores she opens, the more leverage she will have to negotiate prices. For now, she looks for creative ways to keep costs down. For example, McKenna has a cookbook coming out soon. In exchange for a discount, she mentioned some of her suppliers in the book. In terms of geographic expansion, McKenna's L.A. store will share a building with a new Earnest Sewn boutique, and the businesses will share the cost of the build-out and rent. After that, McKenna is intrigued with the idea of franchising. A number of customers have already expressed interest in opening BabyCakes stores in other cities, and she likes the idea of holding a competition that asks potential franchisees to submit videos pitching their Page 1 of 2The Get Ahead Guide: Erin McKenna Makes the Best Cupcakes in New York City | Print... 7/30/2008http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080701/the-get-ahead-guide-erin-mckenna-makes-the-be... merits. McKenna is also considering moving into packaged foods to be sold at upscale health food stores. Advice from Tom Colicchio Colicchio owns seven Craft restaurants and 12 'wichcraft shops and serves as co-host of Bravo's hit series Top Chef. "Erin has a big business on her hands. Her food is delicious, and allergy-friendly foods have become a huge issue. If people are eating this way for health reasons, then they are fanatics, and if they are shopping at BabyCakes because their kids have allergies, then they are even more fanatical about it. But beyond health, she can also position her business as a lifestyle brand. "Of course, you get involved with cooking because it's something you love to do. It's not something you go into thinking, I'm going to make a pile of money. There are easier ways to get rich. So if Erin decides she is going to grow her business, she needs to ask herself some questions. How quickly does she want to grow? Does she have the people to do it? Does she have the organization to get there? "It's important to have a clear mission statement -- a clear list of tenets -- and I think she has that. Her employees are very clear when they come into work what's expected of them. They're going to have customers with certain needs, and they should treat them in a certain way. And when it comes to adding new menu items, refined sugar is never ever going to be in a recipe. Everyone who works for her understands that. "As far as franchising, if you have people who can do it, then that's great. But the amount of work you have to go through to franchise is enormous. It's a lot of legal work. And even if you make it, it's hard to control your brand, especially if you're not that established. That said, I think it's smart that she's had employees sign NDAs and noncompetes. She has protected herself, at least to some degree. "Personally, I believe that opening company-owned stores is a better way to expand. And Erin doesn't have to look to other cities or even other neighborhoods. At 'wichcraft, I've found that if we open two stores close together, they do more business than a store that's off by itself. Right now, we're struggling with the question of market saturation. How do you become a business that can grow without becoming something that feels like a chain? Because chain is sort of a dirty word. "And then it's a matter, as a founder, of trying to figure out what you're best suited to do. In order to open up multiple locations as a chef or a baker, you have to check your ego at the door. The second you think nobody else can do what you can do, you're not going to grow. You have to rely on the fact that you can train someone, and that he or she will put his or her heart and soul into the business as much as you would. If you don't have that trust, it won't work." Final thoughts from Erin Mckenna "After hearing what Tom said about franchising, I will definitely think twice about it. Instead, maybe I'll open only bakeries that I'll own personally and when I can find people whom I trust to run them. I am going to focus most of my energy on packaged goods sold at health food stores. I think the key message is that if I keep everything creatively on track, the business will be OK." BabyCakes NYC's Reality Check: 1. McKenna wants to build a brand, but several other bakeries use a similar name. 2. Recipes are notoriously hard to protect, no matter how much you try. 3. Franchising lets you expand quickly, but beware the legal costs -- and the loss of control over your business. Page 2 of 2The Get Ahead Guide: Erin McKenna Makes the Best Cupcakes in New York City | Print... 7/30/2008http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080701/the-get-ahead-guide-erin-mckenna-makes-the-be... jbronowi http://www.womenentrepreneur.com/print/article/2866.html