Home-Grown and Nationally Known
(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)April 15, 2009 by Sarah Blaskovich
It’s OK to be cheap.
With a startup business and zero profit, O’Brien knew she’d have to be frugal. So instead of hiring a full-time staff right away, she did a lot of the legwork for the company herself. “I realized it would grow organically, and I was cheap,” she says.
She learned that relationships with friends and family members helped her get discounted rates from people she needed to hire, like an accountant and a graphic designer. She found that most of the people who supported her new brand were glad to see it succeed, but it was important that she found trustworthy people to work with. One patent attorney, for instance, told her it probably wasn’t worth the $5,000 to get a patent when she began the business. For that reason, she was able to take that $5,000 and invest it in the company. And when she needed an attorney later, he was still there for her.
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Merle Jablin O’Brien, owner of OlovesM, has a great story to tell. I liked reading this article. Her bags are sold in 33 states and she gets 100,000 or more hits to her website monthly, which is incredible. I think what she is quoted as saying in the article is correct, when she says it’s all about the product. I wish her continued success.