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NAPANEE — Elizabeth Botting thought she was starting the town's first lingerie specialty shop to be her own boss and have flexible hours to be with her husband who was living with leukemia. After 18 months of planning — much of it with the help of her husband of 38 years, Keith, who was then undergoing cancer treatments — tragedy struck.
Just 10 days after Milady's Lace opened in April, Botting's husband died of a fungal infection, a complication of his cancer treatment.
"You can't do anything about it," she said. "I had to pick myself up and move on.
"We closed for several weeks and then we reopened. For me, to a great degree, (this store) is in his memory."
Despite the emotional setback, Botting's business has more than doubled its income projections in its first six months.
"I can still feel Keith here, watching over, helping things along," she says.
Botting credits Lennox and Addington County's enterprise facilitation office with helping make her dream come true, especially the county's enterprise facilitator, Tracey Snow.
"Tracey helped connect me to the right website people, the right marketing person, the right accounting person, and helped me set up a two-year business plan," Botting said.
The enterprise facilitation office was set up just about a year ago, when the county recognized that small businesses and entrepreneurs were the hardest hit by the recession, said Stephen Paul, manager of economic development for the county.
To date, the project has created 144 jobs, helped 21 new businesses start, expanded 10 and helped seven others stay in business.
Snow works with a resource team of local business people with a wide variety of skills and contacts to give the tools and resources an entrepreneur needs to start a successful business.
She travels across the county and meets with business owners and prospective entrepreneurs at kitchen tables, garages, or the local coffee shop. The service is free and confidential.
Snow says she is pleased the project's reputation has sparked word-of-mouth success and notes that more than 84% of all communities are built on small business.
"When I walk anywhere in L&A, they tell me they have a friend who wants to start a business," she says.
As for advice for prospective clients?
"Anything is possible, as long as they have a passion for something and their goals are realistic," she says.
Paul says the project is just one way that shows the county is well positioned to maintain growth and to face current economic uncertainties. He points out that the latest statistics available show the total business-employer count in the county is 1,698, an increase of 159, or about 10%, from June 2010.
"I don't see why we should not stay on solid ground," he says. "During the recession auto plants were closing, but Goodyear was in full production."
The county's largest employers are manufacturers, and many have been increasing staff, with Bombardier doubling its workforce, now at 320 workers, and Goodyear increasing its staff by about 30 employees.
If you ask, he can cite at least a dozen similar success stories.
Botting was Snow's first client, and Snow remains very proud of her, though she seems an unlikely person to peddle lacy panties and pretty bras.
The easygoing, whimsical grandmother has an off-beat sense of humour — though she says her shop still embarrasses her grandsons a little bit —and says she is making her own mark.
"I want the place to feel like a place where women can come and have coffee," she said. "It's not a big city store."
Besides lingerie for the honeymoon set, she has less-pricey, sporty garments for younger women and teens and lines of mastectomy and post-breast cancer surgery undergarments, as well as breast prostheses.
A staff member is a breast cancer survivor, and though breast cancer clients can make appointments for fittings for mastectomy lines, they do not have to, she said.
"I know from my husband, cancer patients have so many appointments it is just nice to feel normal like you can walk in like anyone else."
Her sense of whimsy and humour comes out when the giant pair of panties — 305 centimetres around — fills the store's window to let everyone know she is having a "really big sale."
"I don't see why we have to be so hush, hush about ladies undergarments, whether they are sexy with garters or practical sports bras."
From: County project offers solid foundation
By: Robin Harvey
The Kingston Whig Standard
September 28, 2011 |
