Rachel Ray, media/cooking/merchandise mogul, has taken her love of food, cooking and talking, and (along with a lot of hard work, guts and determination) has amassed an empire—a brand that rivals even the greatest Domestic Diva of them all, Martha Stewart.
“Decide what it is that you are and then stay true to that thing,” she is quoted as saying in a recent article in CNN Magazine.
So, we wondered about those savvy, gutsy Edina women who have taken their own passions, thrown the proverbial caution to the wind, and set out on their own business ventures. How did they get there? And what have they learned about themselves along the way? Well, we didn’t have to look far; turns out that Edina is teeming with women entrepreneurs. We sat down with a few of those gals who have spent the time to figure out, as Rachel Ray puts it, “what it is they are” and how they stay true to that path.
Rachel Swardson - Bavia Health
It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention … and that adage certainly holds true in Rachel Swardson’s case. After giving birth to her third child in 2005, Swardson, feeling sore, tired, very overwhelmed and a lot under-cared-for as she lay in her austere hospital room, said to herself, “There has to be a better way to welcome a new mother into this world.”
So she set out to make a better way.
Swardson (who worked five years as a producer/medical journalist on PBS show Health Diary before having children) spent two years researching birth cultures around the globe, and noticed four constant components in each of the birth experiences within those cultures: heat, aromatherapy, song and massage. Armed with the knowledge vetted during her research, she created a postnatal therapy that would be brought right to new moms in their hospital rooms and was designed to help them ease their anxiety, soothe their aches and pains, help them sleep better, and better prepare them for their “fourth-trimester journey.”
So, with a $12,000 investment she secured from her brother and a friend, and $5,000 from an old IRA, she forged ahead with Go Home Gorgeous. Mind you, it was winter of 2008 and everyone tried to talk her out of it.
“People would say things like, ‘You’re a first-time business owner and the economy is crashing; this is the worst time to start a business,’” says Swardson, who answered her critics by saying, “This is the perfect time to do it.”
Turns out, she was right.
Fairview Southdale was the first hospital to sign on, and then Fairview Ridges and Methodist Hospital shortly thereafter. (Swardson has never had to call a hospital to sell her service; they’ve always called her.) To date, over 1,000 customers have either purchased or were gifted full-body massages, foot eucalyptus steam wraps, heated temple treatments, and a host of other services in 14 hospitals by a cadre of 32 pink-lab-coat-clad therapists.
Swardson has expanded her original vision to answer hospitals’ requests for bringing in her services for cancer patients, transplant recipients and donors, and those in hospice care; she recently rebranded, changing the name to Bavia Health. In keeping with that new vision, she has secured $1 million in financial backing, and has commitments to move into 40 additional hospitals next year in the Twin Cites and New Jersey. Not to mention that she was the 2010 Minnesota Cup General Division Winner.
“The joy is immeasurable that I feel for all of this,” says Swardson as we sit in “The Nest,” a meeting/conference/brainstorming room in their new corporate office. “I feel like I have three biological children and one brain child, and this baby is as demanding and loved by me and my other children as they are to each other. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
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Christine Wheeler - Drazil Foods
“When I was in sixth grade I knew I wanted to start my own company someday,” says Christine Wheeler, owner of Drazil Foods. “And I knew that it was going to be in consumer packaged goods.”
Wheeler, you could say, came about her entrepreneurial spirit honestly: her father owned his own business, and she has fond memories of helping him out during summer vacations and on the weekends. “It seemed really exciting and fun,” she says.
She carried that dream with her and after graduating with an MBA from Wharton (and taking a year off to travel to Warsaw, Poland, to help companies prepare for privatization), Wheeler landed a job with Proctor & Gamble, one of the largest consumer packaged goods companies in the world.
But that risk-taking, entrepreneurial spirit was always there.
Living in Tokyo with her husband and three sons, Wheeler, who always loved drinking tea—passionate about it, in fact—noticed the prevalence of tea in the Japanese culture; she also loved the myriad health benefits derived from the tea. So, one afternoon after returning to the states, she was making juice from concentrate and thought about using herbal tea to dilute the juice instead of water.
“I wanted to make the juice healthier for the kids by adding more antioxidants, more minerals and more vitamins, so I added the tea,” says Wheeler. “The kids loved it. Right then and there the company was born.”
She found two business partners who had experience in the beverage industry, and began researching the right kind of tea to make the drink flavorful and healthy. A blend of pomegranate, rose hips, hibiscus, and rooibos (a South African tea that rivals the health benefits of green tea with a touch more sweetness) was the perfect combination.
There were focus groups, market research, concept testing, on-line surveys, and of course, packaging research. “Visual identity was going to be key,” says Wheeler. She hired a British cartoonist who brought the Drazil (lizard spelled backwards) mascot to life.
In September 2010, Drazil Apple Juice and Fruit Punch made their debut at the Linden Hills Co-op, and since then, have popped up in several other co-ops; soon the anti-oxidant-rich drink will be introduced on the East Coast. Wheeler brought her labor of love to a national food show in Anaheim, California, and Virgin America Airlines asked to sell her juice.
“Our juice has 35 percent more antioxidants than regular apple juice, contains 120 percent daily vitamin C, is caffeine-free and has no sugar added,” says Wheeler. “We feel confident that once people try us, they’ll keep buying.”
Lori Harrington, Carolyn Johnson, Heidi Pierce - Satoree Design
Sometimes those unexpected bumps in the road of life send us skittering in a new direction, on a new path. And sometimes those new paths turn out to be better than the ones we were on in the first place. And that’s exactly what happened to Lori Harrington, Carolyn Johnson and Heidi Pierce.
For eight years, all three ladies worked side-by-side (Johnson and Harrington actually shared a cube in the contractor division) at Home Valu, the iconic home remodeling retailer. They would have lunch together, share their lives and work collaboratively on interior designs. So, when the notice came from the higher-ups on January 5, 2010 that the doors were closing, needless to say, they felt a bit lost.
“We would call each other all the time and just talk,” says Harrington. “It was like having mini therapy sessions.”
But after a bit of commiserating, they all decided to head back to work … together. “We made the decision that if we all joined forces, it would work out fine,” says Pierce.
There was an upside: They were able to take their customer files with them.
“[Clients] were looking for a place to get their work done and we were looking for work, so it worked out great,” says Johnson.
Without the name recognition of Home Valu, the ladies needed to begin building their own reputation as a company. They found a quaint 1,200-square-foot space near Lake Calhoun to use as a studio, but it needed a lot of work. Every surface was redone; they ripped out the stained blue carpeting, jack-hammered and removed old tile. “We really walked the walk,” says Harrington.
They also needed to come up with a name, a brand. “That was so hard,” says Johnson. “We were looking through dictionaries and trying to come up with words that are architecture or design related. I do a lot of yoga and ‘Satoree’ means ‘understanding and enlightenment,’ so we thought that would translate well in our business.”
With over a year under their belts, the ladies have met all of their sales quotas and have taught themselves the nuts and bolts of how to run and grow a successful business. They have done projects from a few thousand to a couple hundred thousand dollars, and have set a goal to expand to a point where they need to hire additional designers.
It seems this path was truly worth the bumpy ride.
“Our pipeline is almost full,” says Harrington. “It’s actually working out very well, and even better than we thought.”
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