It Ain't Over (37 page)

Once Mary was in, she was in. “I tend to be someone who doesn’t have a lot of regrets. I do what I do and I don’t look back. And in those decisive moments, that’s me at my best.”

Mary didn’t know a thing about manufacturing, so she started doing research. “I cold-called companies that made gluten-free products and asked about packaging materials, equipment, ingredient suppliers, distribution, food brokers, and even graphic designers. I went to food shows; people in the natural food business are very helpful. There’s a lot of passion and love in this industry, if you look for it.”

Convinced that Mary had a winning idea, her husband, Dale, quit his general contracting job to help her write a business plan and join her full-time. With family and friends investing in the new venture, they raised $750,000. “It was incredible that so many people, some who knew us well and some who didn’t, would invest their money in us,” she recalls. “It was a big reason that failure was not an option. We were always very aware that these people had entrusted their money to us, and we were not about to lose a penny of it.”

Mary’s initial idea was to sign on a comanufacturer, but finding a company with both gluten-free production space and the special equipment needed to handle the sticky dough proved difficult. So she rummaged through her cupboards, collecting the names on the labels of the gluten-free companies. Then she began making calls. As it turned out, only one company had both the equipment and experience. In 2004, Mary’s Gone Crackers was incorporated.

The next year, Mary closed her psychology practice, and she and Dale went full-time into the cracker business. Then a stroke of luck: Because awareness of gluten sensitivities had been building in the media, gluten-free products began moving into mainstream grocery aisles; as a result, annual sales for Mary’s Gone Crackers soared to $1.5 million. Soon Mary and Dale moved the company into their own manufacturing facility in Gridley, California, and expanded the product line to include new cracker flavors, pretzels, and cookies.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t bumps along the way. “It was a steep learning curve, and we were naive when it came to big business—we learned the hard way.” When a venture capital firm approached the couple with an investment substantial enough to cover their escalating operating expenses, they were flattered. “These guys were the godfathers of the organic food industry and they wanted to invest in our company!” she recalls. But after just a few months, it was clear the investors’ plan was to keep swallowing equity until Mary and Dale would lose majority ownership and be ousted. No longer naive, Mary and Dale took the battle to court and, along with their original investors, retained control of the company.

Fifteen years after that New Year’s resolution, Mary’s Gone Crackers is a powerhouse in the natural foods industry, growing more than 40 percent a year since it started.

In 2013, Mary and Dale sold a large stake of the company to Kameda USA, but this time, they were smarter at cutting a deal and they remain in charge.

“Every step of the way, whenever we wanted to do something, people told us, ‘That’s impossible.’ What I’ve learned is: You have to hold on to what seems like the most outrageous dream you have because often it’s really not that outrageous.”

Cinnamon Bowser, 43

Alexandria, Virginia

C
innamon Bowser could think of ten good reasons to start her business. Twenty, if you count
both
fingers and toes.

It was 2002, and Cinnamon’s good friend Wanda was nine months pregnant with her third child. Feeling huge and uncomfortable, Wanda craved one tiny pleasure: to get a pedicure in her own home. Could Cinnamon help?

“I called around from salon to salon, searched the Internet, and couldn’t find anyone,” Cinnamon recalls. “I said, ‘I know this is not New York, where they have everything, but Washington, D.C., is a major market. We should have this service!’ ”

So she created it herself.

A public relations expert who was then working with the Alexandria public school system, Cinnamon had always itched to have her own business. “In P.R., things work in a cycle: The same stories come up every season, over and
over. I loved all my P.R. jobs, but to be honest, at about the two-year mark, I’d always start to get restless to move on.”

Cinnamon was always dreaming up small-business ideas. She even kept a little notebook where she’d jot them down. “My husband, Steve, was usually not terribly excited when I’d mention one of my brainstorms, but when I told him about my mobile manicure plan, he said, ‘Honey, that’s a great idea!’ I thought,
Maybe I really need to look into this one.
”

Of course, Steve was a guy—he thought that buffers and shellacs were things you found at car washes and that Opi was the name of the little boy on
Andy Griffith
. So Cinnamon asked her women friends. “They loved the idea, too. One said, ‘My sister got married last year and we could have really used someone to come to the hotel and give us manicures.’ Another one told me, ‘My grandmother is stuck at home, and it would be so nice if someone could drop in and help her with her nails.’ ”

Cinnamon knew nothing about the mani-pedi business—other than getting her own nails done—so she got to work researching nail schools, certification credentials, industry standards, and website design. “I’m so thankful I had an office with a door because otherwise I would have been fired!” she recalls. “I remember so clearly sitting in my office with a girlfriend one whole afternoon brainstorming names for the company. We’d come up with one and then I’d go to the domain name site and it was already taken. Then she said, ‘What about Nail Taxi?’ I loved it—and it was available. I bought it on the spot.”

Cinnamon also took night and weekend classes in entrepreneurship. “I learned about everything from finance to human resources to the legal aspects of owning a business,” she recalls. “The classes also taught me how to write a detailed business plan, which I needed in order to get Nail Taxi off the ground.”

Now all she had to do was find the customers, but without an actual salon to attract walk-in business, how could she do it?

The answer came when Cinnamon heard about an upcoming women’s conference in nearby Falls Church, Virginia. “In addition to the speakers, they were going to have vendors offering chair massages and minimakeovers. I thought Nail Taxi should participate—the
next
year. So I sent an email to introduce my company and got an email back ten minutes later saying, ‘We want you to come
this
year.’ I panicked. I thought, ‘I’m not ready to do this!’ But even though I wanted to say no, I said yes.”

She’s glad she did. Cinnamon’s two nail technicians were booked the entire day at the conference, giving mini-manicures. And at the end of the day, Cinnamon kept the sign-up sheet and used it as the beginning of Nail Taxi’s client list. “Afterward, those women at the conference called to schedule more appointments. Most important, they told other women in the area about us. That one event is really what got Nail Taxi out of the gate.”

Within five months, Nail Taxi had so much business that Cinnamon decided to quit her school job. “It was bananas. It got so crazy that I was spending a lot of my time at work answering emails and calls from Nail Taxi clients. But the business was giving me such fulfillment, I thought,
I have to roll out of here.
”

Cinnamon also realized she needed to go to nail school and actually learn how to do mani-pedis herself. “I figured that if I was ever in a crunch, I could be that extra pair of hands,” she says. So she enrolled at a nearby school operated by two Vietnamese men in the back of a nail salon. “It was a challenge. I could read and retain what they were teaching, but it definitely took some time to learn how to use my hands. Even buffing takes practice. And it took me awhile to get comfortable touching people who weren’t family members or friends. I was not what you’d call a natural.”

What Cinnamon
was
really good at was marketing her business. That first year, she’d send out a press release every six weeks about Nail Taxi,
emphasizing the mobility of its services: Technicians would go to homes, hospitals, senior centers, parties, weddings—wherever.

“Those releases got an incredible response,” she says, “which led to media coverage, which led to more business. It helped that this was a feel-good story. In between articles about budget cuts or schools underperforming, here was a story about a service for women and men who cannot get out and have their nails done. Even though it’s a small thing, a manicure can change a person’s outlook on her day.”

And media feeds off media. So within a year, Nail Taxi was featured on many local stations in D.C., and got coverage in several national magazines. “That’s how I got the first inquiry about opening Nail Taxi in another city. A woman saw our name in the press and wanted to open one in Richmond. It’s also why corporate clients started calling.”

Today, besides the D.C. area, which Cinnamon oversees herself, Nail Taxi has licensing agreements in ten other major U.S. cities, Canada, and the Bahamas. “My goal is that someday, women and men will go to their hotel wherever they are and tell the concierge, ‘Schedule me an appointment with Nail Taxi, please.’ ”

Nail Taxi has done in-store events or promotions for companies like Neiman Marcus, Stride Rite, and Guess. It has worked with designers to prep models for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. CoverGirl even hired the company for a two-day “NailGating” event at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor before the Ravens’ 2013 season opener. The “fan-icures,” done by a team of ten technicians, featured the Ravens’ team colors—purple, black, and gold—in a variety of designs. The day’s only bad news: The Ravens were shellacked by the Broncos, 49–27.

That kind of promotional work has been a delightful surprise to Cinnamon. “When I started out, I thought most of my clients would be women in
the hospital, on bed rest, pregnant women, seniors. I was not thinking Fashion Week and the NFL!”

Nine years after starting her business, Cinnamon’s restless days are behind her. “I love running Nail Taxi. No two days are the same, I get to work with creative people, and the hours are flexible. So if I want to go on a field trip with one of my three kids, I don’t have to ask someone—I can just go and enjoy it.

“Best of all, clients are always happy to see us. Nail polish has replaced lipstick as the go-to cosmetic for women. It’s recession-proof; no matter what’s going on with the economy, women will still get their nails done. It doesn’t cost a lot and, as I say all the time, ‘It’s not a tattoo, it’s just polish.’ ”

Deana Gunn, 44

Encinitas, California

Wona Miniati, 45

San Francisco, California

T
here’s made-from-scratch, and then there’s made-from-
almost
-scratch.

Deana Gunn was a specialist in the latter. She had to be: A pioneering PhD rocket scientist who developed technology for an optics start-up company, she woke up early for conference calls with European partners before handing off her two kids to a full-time nanny so she could head to the office—then at the end of a frenetic workday ran in the door at six o’clock to cook dinner. “It was quite a juggle,” she says.

To make it all work, Deana had to become a genius in fast-track meal prep. The truth was, she had a sneaky little secret: She was always amazing dinner guests and delighting her kids with fancy concoctions like
bruschetta-stuffed bread, black bean soup, or corn bread layered casserole. But all of that time-consuming prep work for her meals? It was being done by the pros at Trader Joe’s, the nationwide gourmet supermarket that specializes in already-prepared ingredients, like sauces, doughs, cooked shredded meats, or cut-up veggies. “I could buy little pouches of brown rice from the freezer section and something that usually takes 45 minutes to cook was ready in three minutes,” she says.

Deana had never been shy about sharing the tricks of her trade with friends, but it took a visit to her favorite grocery store (yes, Trader Joe’s) to inspire her to share the wealth with other customers. During one of her twice-weekly shopping runs, she noticed a stranger staring glassy-eyed at a box of quinoa. “I heard Oprah say it’s good for you, but what do you do with it?” the woman asked. Deana rattled off three recipes, wished her happy cooking, and continued shopping.