The Worthy Women of Main Street

Written By Patricia Rouzer

Perhaps Carroll County’s glass ceiling hasn’t exactly shattered over the last several years, but it has clearly developed significant cracks. Once a male dominated domain, the county’s small business community has been quietly and steadily infiltrated by a number of successful distaff entrepreneurs who daily prove their good commercial sense and ability to compete head-to-head with the boys.

Statistical evidence of the growth of women-owned businesses in the county is scarce, but the indirect substantiation is strong. And on a state level, Maryland’s Department of Economic and Business Development estimates there are some 443,000 small businesses in the state, of which approximately 128,000 are women owned.

The Women’s Center for Business Research, a national organization, estimates that 167,107 privately-held, majority of women-owned firms in Maryland (51 percent or more) generate more than $21 billion in sales and employ 142,863 people. From 1997 to 2006, the number of women-owned firms in Maryland increased by 58.1 percent and sales grew by 16.1 percent. According to the center, Maryland ranks 11th among the U.S. States in the number of privately-held, women-owned firms.

If one needs convincing that the prominence of women in Carroll County’s business community is growing, consider the success of Karen Barbour, President of the Westminster-based Barbour Group, LLC, a surety bond and commercial insurance firm, who was named 2008 Maryland Small Business Owner of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

In this still-growing county, Main Street bears witness to the quiet but dramatic emergence of women entrepreneurs. The majority of businesses on Mount Airy’s quaint 19th century streetscape – some 14 of them – are owned by women. Likewise, the downtown portion of Westminster’s Main Street has more than 20 businesses owned or operated by women. Little Sykesville’s main street has at least four.

And although their businesses are markedly different, the women’s recipes for business success are remarkably similar. Hard work, passion for the job, tenacity and solid business sense are the hallmarks of all them, many of whom have sacrificed much personally and professionally to be their own boss.

Carol Cahall, owner of The Main Event, a Mount Airy party rental and supply company and current Chair of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce, noted that her predecessor as Chamber Chair was a woman, and when she relinquishes her post in December, a woman will succeed her.

“The Chamber tries to maintain a healthy mix of businesses and men and women on its board,” she said. “We have no problem finding women business owners to participate.”

Make no mistake: the number of women business owners is definitely growing. But building a business is still no cakewalk for a local woman.

“It is definitely harder for a woman to get a business loan. In the current economic environment it is almost impossible,” Cahall said. “Credit lines are shrinking and even customers with good credit ratings have problems getting credit.” In the best of economic times it takes a strong business plan and extraordinary self-discipline for a female entrepreneur to establish a successful business.

“I would tell any woman interested in opening her own business that she had better be prepared to get by without taking any money out of her business for at least two years; more likely three to four for most people. You need to reinvest your profits back into your business,” she said. “If you can’t get by for at least two years without any income, you should forget it.

“No matter how good things are, be prepared for some rough times, like January and February, when people are recovering from Christmas bills and aren’t spending anything,” Cahall said.

It helps to have someone with whom to share the financial and emotional load. When Cahall started her business eight years ago, her husband, who now operates The Main Event’s rental operation, had a good job that carried the family through in lean times.

Mary Martin, owner of Contrary Mary’s on Sykesville’s Main Street, lacks the well-employed spouse or partner to see her over the rough patches. Formerly an accountant for a dot com business in downtown Baltimore, Mary spent years commuting to the city while yearning to have her own establishment. In 2001 she opened her artsy gift boutique, five minutes from her Sykesville area home, and has never looked back.

Martin is both owner and staff, a situation which has advantages and disadvantages. She is the sole decision maker and tracks her own finances, but when Martin is not there the store is not open. And she candidly admits that if she had someone with whom to share household expenses, she would take more business risks.

Martin attracts customers from the Sykesville-Eldersburg area and beyond. She stocks items she likes, going counter to one vendor’s admonition to buy some products that don’t fit her personal tastes.

“She told me for every customer who sees a thing and loves it, there is another who sees it and hates.” Mary stood firm. “That may be true, but I buy only things I like. If I’m going to be stuck with something, it’s going to be something I like.”

As sole proprietor and sales person, Martin finds it difficult to network with other area business owners through the South Carroll Business Association, whose monthly luncheon meetings are held on Wednesdays when Martin must man the store.

She does have a close collegial relationship with another woman shop owner, Debbie Shiller, owner of A Likely Story, a small independent bookstore down the street. Shiller, who stocks some gift items from the vendors that Martin buys from, has been known to send slow-selling items from her store to Martin if they seem more appropriate for the latter’s customer base.

This kind of woman-to-woman cooperation appears common in the county small business circles.

Dalia Schulman is the owner of Knittin’ Chicks, a yarn store in Mount Airy. She knows every shop owner in that town of 6,500, most of whom are women. When a devastating Main Street fire destroyed some businesses last September Schulman pitched in to help her burned out neighbors.

She confirmed that small business owners – even established ones – often faced almost insurmountable difficulty finding financing.

“There are 15 banks in the Mount Airy area,” she said. “After the fire we approached all of them about financing. Only two were even willing to talk to us.”

On the other hand, she said that Mount Airy’s town government has been extraordinarily helpful and cordial to its predominantly female Main Street business owners.

Schulman and her husband came from the suburbs of Washington where her husband still runs the family catering business. Twenty four years spent working long hours on her feet and two back surgeries persuaded Dalia to consider other employment. Tired of the long commute to the D.C. suburbs and the endless traffic, she told her friends she wanted to open a yarn store on Main Street in the quiet little county town.

“They thought I was either very passionate or just plain nuts,” she said. Her bright yellow shop is small, but its reach extends far beyond Mount Airy’s town limits. Customers come from as far away as Baltimore and Washington and it is a good bet that they visit other Mount Airy stores as well.

Like Mount Airy, Westminster has a growing number of female business owners with interesting names offering a variety of merchandise and services: Patrice Campitelli, opened Wine Me Up, Westminster’s first wine bar, in January. Lou Chang, owner of Ain’t That a Frame is a business veteran of more than two decades. Their experiences have been markedly different.

Campitelli was a Vice President of Human Resources for a bank before leaving the corporate world. Like many members of the entrepreneurial sisterhood, Campitelli financed her own business from savings.

“Today, particularly in this economy, if I had gone to a financial institution for financing, I would have been turned down. Everybody in banking is playing it on the safe side and neither my husband nor I have a background in restaurant start up,” she said.

She did her homework, visiting wine bars in Baltimore, New York and California, to learn how they functioned: what worked and what did not. Her homework paid off. Although her business has an occasional slow day, most evenings it is filled to capacity.

Campitelli is the sole owner of the business, but her husband helps out and her small staff is composed of friends she knows and trusts. She picked the location, 61 1/2 East Main Street, because she liked the look of the graceful old building. She paid for the ambiance she got in time.

“If I had wanted to open my business in a new building it would have taken 90 days,” Campitelli said. “Because it was an old building we had to insure its structural integrity, get permits and do renovations; it took nine months.”

From the beginning Campitelli found the environment on Main Street welcoming; both from patrons and other business owners. “There are lots of women business owners here who have been very supportive,” she said. And the male owners of the major downtown restaurants have been equally helpful.

“I send customers to them, they send customers to me,” she said. “Nobody wants to go to the same place all the time. We’re all different. We all offer different things. We don’t aggressively compete.”

Lou Chang, owner of Ain’t That a Frame, had a much different experience when she opened her business in 1987. To provide financing for the store, Lou’s sister, who lived in the area, mortgaged her house. When Lou, a newly divorced mother of three small children, opened her shop at the corner of Liberty Street and West Green Street, the community’s welcome was not so warm.

“The community was hostile to a large degree,” she said. “I remember one person told me tearing down the building for a parking lot would have been of more value to the city than my business,” she recalled. Others were affronted that she would dare to compete with an existing Main Street gallery and framing store (now defunct). In the face of naysayers and critics Lou persisted.

By the early 1990s she had moved her store to Main Street, expanded it to include a gallery, discontinued the do-it-yourself framing and begun offering a variety of high quality art and American arts and crafts, in addition to custom framing.

Over the years the hostility has faded and the community has embraced not only Lou’s business, but Lou herself. Recently, under difficult personal circumstances, Lou discovered just how much things had changed.
Bedridden after breaking her back in an automobile accident, she received a flood of notes, flowers, cards; even meals prepared by friends and associates she had developed through her business.

“I was really touched to feel so much a part of the community,” said Lou, who is still not back at work full time.

As a veteran entrepreneur, her advice to would-be female entrepreneurs is straightforward and concise:
“Research carefully, make sure there is a need for what you want to do, budget well and don’t expect to be an overnight success,” she said. “There is no instant gratification.”