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The Tip is 'Keep eyes open' After reading an article about items made in America I thought about how many times I make purchases without thinking. I'm usually focused on budget and needs. Prior to reading this article on made in the USA products, I rarely thought about the importance of buying made in USA products. This helps create jobs in our country. Now I keep my eyes open and I am surprised how easy it is to find American products. It only takes a few seconds to look. Now I make a point when I am shopping to search for made in America brands. By doing so, I'm able to identify more and more what products are made in America. Even with my eyes open to made in USA I can get discouraged. Sometimes store clerks don't know the country of origin which can be frustrating. If this happens use your eyes to find the origin information yourself. Look at the labels and when you find a Made in USA product tell the clerk so the next time they are asked they will know. Also, when the label is not easily seen I use the other made in America buying tips to help me find made in USA. If the store doesn't carry what you are looking for, use Made in America Secrets to find it and tell the manager about your experience at their store. When enough people are asking for made in the USA products, more stores will begin to carry products that are made here. This technique does work. I also pick and choose the stores I visit. I do this because I have found that some stores are made in America friendly while others are not. Keep your eyes open for the made in USA label and pretty soon you will be able to identify which products are made in the USA. Buying Tip Continued - Read more on Made in America Products by Winsome Fragrance Babies were the mothers of invention for Mary Vail. Vail, from her Whitefish home, is at the helm of her own company manufacturing products for children. She has good business sense that she wanted to put to use, but didn't want to work away from her four children. The two paths merged after the birth of her twin girls, now 14. Vail found she much preferred that the babies she handed over when family and friends visited be sweet-smelling. Thus was born Winsome Fragrance Co., producing roll-on cologne dubbed children's fragrance with a mother's touch. I'm still at that stage where my family comes first, so I allowed my company to grow slow and steady, Vail said of the start-up 13 years ago. That was to my advantage. She set up shop when the family still lived in California, and continued when they moved to Montana four years ago. With all her children in their teens now and her husband, John, retired, she gradually is getting the whole family in on the fragrance act. Today, because of conscious choices and course corrections, Vail is making a life ? not just a living. Research ? intensive and non-stop ? was indispensable for Vail. When she got the idea for her children's fragrances, in the pre-Internet-boom days, she found herself continually in the library. She talked with small-business organizations, especially the Service Core of Retired Executives. She pored over issues of Entrepreneur Magazine. She's now reading the book, Grow Your Business. She bought baby powders to get the scent right. She lined up chemists to make them. She found a bottle maker, a contract filler, a label maker, a box maker for the bottles and a graphic designer to make that packaging attractive. The business-to-business Yellow Pages were her bible, she said. And she tracked down financing sources ? not an easy task. Her great-grandparents had run their own bakery business, and her own business administration degree had taught her about writing business plans. But it wasn't enough. When I started I couldn't get a small-business loan so I had to take a second mortgage, Vail said. Bankers had told her they were not giving those loans so, as an option, the Small Business Administration suggested a second mortgage ? but only if she were willing to take the huge risk. It paid off with Winsome Fragrance Co. ? which has grown now to a line of four scents, two for boys and two for girls. Whether large corporations or small entrepreneurial ventures, businesses struggle without focused marketing. Vail's product development and marketing were methodical. She tested her first products within her own parent-child play groups, a local community college's parenting class play group and the Mom's Club national organization. Once she was solid with the scents, Vail put her first products on the market in 1994. Then in 1997 I was able to do trunk shows at Nordstrom's, every weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas, she said. That was a huge stepping stone for me. With customers requesting the products throughout the week, she finally landed the full-on Nordstrom's account and has been there ever since. Today, she's expanded to more than 750 department and specialty stores nationwide. She's selling 25,000 bottles a year ? a number she hopes to double in the next five years. She plans to promote that expansion with press releases and store contacts with follow-up calls, but doesn't plan on paid advertising because of her broad national reach and the expense involved. It takes motivation and a proactive attitude, Vail said, to make a success of a business. You have to believe in your product. You have to be willing to accept a lot of ?no's' and still believe in your product, she said. You have to be able to take the financial risk. You have to be willing to stick with it ? it's a big commitment. Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com |
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