Build a business

It’s darn hard being a glass half-full kind of guy these days. Last March the jobless ranks swelled to 13.2 million, pushing the unemployment rate to 8.5%.

Some of those folks will land on their feet in the same industry. Others will re-invent themselves. And still others will head for … their garages.

Recessions have birthed myriad entrepreneurs. Following is the third and last in a series in upstate New York who have used bumps in the road as motivation to back out the Buick and set up shop within walking distance of their mailboxes.

Tony Ogeen, 51, Tony’s Canvas and Leather, Massena, N.Y.

Thirteen years ago, Ogeen got into a really bad car accident. Unable to go back to work as a corrections officer, but needing an income to support his young family, he began considering self-employment. “I was always reading about people starting a business doing what they are good at,” he says. “The only thing I knew I was pretty good at was repairing my son’s hockey equipment. In fact, his whole team relied on me for keeping their equipment in shape.”

In 2001, during the last recession, Ogeen started searching online for industrial sewing machines that he could set up in his garage; he settled on a supplier across the Canadian border. “I started out making and repairing boat tops and continued repairing my son’s [team's] hockey equipment,” he says. “I also learned how to re-palm hockey gloves because it is like a lost art.”

Ogeen’s biggest challenge: marketing. “I knew there was a need locally for what I do [hockey is a way of life in upstate New York], but I wanted to go nationally,” he says. “I was reluctant to invest much time and money in the Internet at first.” Eventually he had a Web site designed (tonyscanvas.com), though it didn’t bring in any sales in the first year.

Frustrated but resilient, Ogeen took a Web design course offered by a local economic development agency. “Now my canvas hockey bags are on the first pages of Google, which has doubled my bottom line,” he says. “Looking back, the only mistake I made was not marketing my business using the Internet sooner.”

Solid customer service helps too. As soon as the work is completed, Ogeen loads up his truck and drives the reconstituted equipment to the team’s rink. “I have always tried to deliver my work whenever I can,” he says. “I think the extra effort pays off. If I can solve a customer’s problem and make it really easy for them, it will lead to more work.”

Indeed, the increased demand has forced Ogeen to hire on his first employee: “I trained my 15-year-old son, Zeppy, how to sew,” he crows. “He is my bag man now.”

For more information, visit forbes.com.

It’s darn hard being a glass half-full kind of guy these days. Last March the jobless ranks swelled to 13.2 million, pushing the unemployment rate to 8.5%.

Some of those folks will land on their feet in the same industry. Others will re-invent themselves. And still others will head for … their garages.

Recessions have birthed myriad entrepreneurs. Following is the second in a series in upstate New York who have used bumps in the road as motivation to back out the Buick and set up shop within walking distance of their mailboxes.

Meg Ingraham, 52, Racquette River Rods, Potsdam, N.Y.

A few years ago, while nursing her husband through back surgery and her 90-year-old mother-in-law through a broken ankle, Ingraham noodled the idea of working from home. “I needed a steady income but wanted to do something that I really enjoyed, and do it on my own,” she says. “A number of years ago I was given the chance to learn how to build fishing rods and I loved it. Working with crafts, seeing something growing in my hands and making a living at it was very appealing.”

A year ago the rod maker she worked for went out of business, but a couple of the employees were very interested in opening a new shop. So Ingraham started clearing out the garage.

Since then, every day has been a challenge. “My first order for components was wrong,” she admits. “I bought lots of great stuff [for about $4,100] on closeout thinking I was making a wise investment, but ultimately these parts are not at all what we needed to make the type of rod we had envisioned.” Her biggest mistake: overestimating her business knowledge. “I can build a beautiful, functional and perfect rod, but that’s not enough to run a business,” she says.

To bolster her skills, Ingraham looked for courses in accounting and bookkeeping offered by the four local universities. “I have attended so many classes in the last few months that my head is spinning, but I feel so much better about my ability to tackle the budgeting issues that have been holding me back,” she says. One course, for free, offered by the State University of New York in Canton, provided four hours of basic accounting training, a free copy of QuickBooks and two hours of on-site training.

Thus far, Ingraham has invested $41,150 for renovations to the garage and to purchase machinery and initial components. Of that, $13,000 came from a loan received through the Potsdam Economic Development Office at an interest rate of 2%; the rest, from personal savings. She has yet to break even. “We do a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul but I have learned that it is part of the start-up process,” she says.

For more information, visit forbes.com.

It’s darn hard being a glass half-full kind of guy these days. Last March the jobless ranks swelled to 13.2 million, pushing the unemployment rate to 8.5%.

Some of those folks will land on their feet in the same industry. Others will re-invent themselves. And still others will head for … their garages.

Recessions have birthed myriad entrepreneurs. Following is the first of three in upstate New York who have used bumps in the road as motivation to back out the Buick and set up shop within walking distance of their mailboxes.

Tim Gardner, 55, St. Lawrence Valley Roasters, Lisbon, N.Y.

For many of us, coffee and the morning paper is part of the daily routine. Gardner, recently retired from a job working with the mentally disabled, had home-roasted his own coffee for several years. He figured he could do the same for a few customers. After a lot of reading, “I eventually started understanding the coffee roasting business and what was involved,” he says. “I talked it over with my wife, and she agreed that I could use the workshop in our garage.”

In June 2008, Gardner borrowed $10,000 from the bank using an unsecured line of credit and got another $20,000 from a local economic development agency in October. The plan: sell coffee to retail customers via his Web site and his wife’s gift shop, and wholesale it to regional gift shops, natural food stores and coffee shops.

Then came the hiccups–like getting a handle on expenses. “I didn’t follow my business plan and purchased too much coffee,” he admits. “I thought having more would help me sell more.” (Gardner recouped part of those losses by peddling his overstock on eBay.) Nor did he properly account for the costs of packaging, utilities and his own time–all of which made pricing his coffee that much harder: “I more or less made up prices with no real basis to start from,” he admits.

Harder still, other start-up costs to outfit the garage were higher than anticipated. A new electrical entrance, to handle the additional power requirements, ran $1,500; adding running water sopped up an additional $1,200; and the duct work used to vent the roaster increased drastically in price because Gardner made some incorrect assumptions about what a vent actually meant.

“State code required a commercial vent system that doubled the price from the residential vent systems for fireplaces that I was familiar with,” he says. “I went from my estimate of $1,000 to over $2,000.” He also ended up buying a different roaster than he originally projected–another $1,000 out the door.

All worth it, he says: “The best part of self-employment is not having to fix problems caused by others’ poor decisions. I can work when I want, try things that I want and learn from my own screw-ups.”

Thanks to some local press, customers are lining up. Several new restaurants and Potsdam College, a local state university with just under 5,000 students, sell St. Lawrence River Valley Roasters exclusively. While the company isn’t churning out enough to live on, it is growing and self-sustaining. For now, Gardner quips, “as long as I am willing to work for free, I get good coffee out of it.”
For more information, visit forbes.com.