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Charleston moms rock the business cradle
By Lindsay Street
Staff Writer
In spite of the childproof locks and baby gates, risk looms large at Emily Poland’s house in West Ashley.
In June, Poland launched a baby-food company called Organic Baby Grub. She is simultaneously running the business and raising her five-year-old son and one-year-old daughter.
As a new entrepreneur, Poland is a part of a growing national and local trend: women risking financial security to work, self-employed, from home while raising their children.
The Charleston area is home to the fastest-growing number of women-owned businesses in South Carolina, according to Jennet Alterman, executive director of the Charleston-based Center for Women. The Center for Women’s Business Research in Washington, D.C., which researches the economic and social contributions of women-owned firms across the United States, reported that South Carolina ranks 13th for states with the fastest-growing number of women-owned businesses.
Women-owned businesses in the Charleston region number 17,000, and of those, some 40% are run by work-at-home moms, Alterman said. The businesses owned and in some cases created by the work-at-home moms run the gamut from business services to online retail stores and more.
Mothers are gravitating toward business ownership because they want to raise a family but remain in control of their professional and personal lives at the same time, Alterman said.
In Charleston, a constant influx of new residents has brought in a high number of stay-at-home mothers who also have high education levels and corporate backgrounds, she said.
According to the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Business Research, 34% of the women in the tri-county area have an associates degree or higher.
Longing for more
And many of these highly educated women are not content to stay only on the mommy track.
Robin Berlinsky launched Niki Leigh Spa in 2003. Running her own business solved the nagging, “something is missing” feeling that plagued her in the beginning of motherhood.
Although she loved caring for her children, she longed for something more.
“I couldn’t stop the drive (to become an entrepreneur),” Berlinsky said. “I just didn’t feel complete. Now I can have kids and work at home.”
The region’s employer demographics also give rise to home-based businesses owned by mothers. The Charleston area lacks great numbers of large employers who typically can offer the executive positions that often have more flexibility, according to the metro chamber’s business research center, which found that a staggering 96% of the region’s businesses have a work force of fewer than 50. It is often more difficult for smaller businesses to offer flexible hours and time off for child care.
“The work place, as it exists now (in the Charleston market), allows no wiggle room to be a responsible parent,” Alterman said. Many businesses are spawned by mothers’ desire to have more control of their lives in their working hours.
Niche products
According to Mompreneurs Online, a Web-based business dedicated to helping moms run their businesses from home, many businesses owned by mothers are online-based, fill a unique niche and advocate social or environmental causes.
“The ability to market your products online … gives a viability that wouldn’t have existed 20 years ago,” Rosenberg said.
Web site-based businesses also have lower startup costs, said Ryan Sherwood, who owns and operates PalmettoDiaperWorks.com, which sells cloth diapers and accessories.
PalmettoDiaperWorks.com receives 75% of its business over the Internet and 25% locally.
Offering a niche product was also attractive to Poland and helped her decide to make the leap into business ownership.
“I was scared to go into something people were already doing,” Poland said. While organic baby food was being successfully sold and marketed in California, there was no similar product in the Southeast, she said, so Organic Baby Grub was born.
Poland is working out a deal to sell her product in a nationwide grocery chain. Currently, the line is sold at Home Grown Grocery in West Ashley and through Poland’s Web site, www.organicbabygrub.com.
It is difficult, these women said, to simultaneously juggle the demands of running a business and tending to their children. Business hours often coincide with children’s waking hours.
“During the day is really (the children’s) time,” Sherwood said.
Berlinsky agreed.
“It was a struggle to find the time to do everything and be great at everything,” she said.
“(But) I can’t give up either one, and this is who I need to be.”
Seek sound counsel
Community-based affirmation and sound counsel have helped many entrepreneurial mothers get and continue on their way, Berlinsky and Poland pointed out.
“Women who are considering (opening a business) and are still scared are networking with women who have done it,” she said. “We’re there for each other; we understand.”
Women who already own businesses or who are considering the prospect also are taking advantage of regional sources of support. The Charleston chamber’s entrepreneurial programs, Service Corps of Retired Executives and FastTrac are drawing mostly women, said Pennie Bingham, vice president of business development and innovation for the chamber.
And all the hard work and efforts to balance the demands of business vs. children are paying off for many. Last year, Niki Leigh Spa, Berlinsky’s business, was named one of the 50 fastest-growing companies in America by Fast Company magazine. Berlinsky called the accolade “a great coup for stay-at-home moms.
“You can have kids running around dropping cereal everywhere and you can be voted on something like that on a national level,” she said.
Yet, some don’t make it—the balancing act of being a work-at-home mom has forced a number of mothers to quit their entrepreneurial endeavors, Berlinsky said. Still, others find ways to soldier on.
“It’s about getting up one more time than you fall,” said Berlinsky. “And there’s no greater lesson in life (for your children) than that.”
Lindsay Street is an editorial assistant for the Business Journal. E-mail her at lstreet@setcommedia.com.
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