Under this legislation, the states received thousands of acres of land (or ’scrip’ for federal lands in other states – New York’s scrip was, believe it or not, forest land in Wisconsin), to be used/managed/sold for the purpose of the establishment of land grant colleges. “The purpose of the land-grant colleges was:
…without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”

For a list of land-grant colleges and universities, go: Land Grant Universities

The system of Cooperative Extension (basically to have agents bring the wonders of all of this research being done at the land grant universities to farmers and housewives everywhere) was added in 1914 by the Smith-Lever Act. And county cooperative extensions have been growing and adapting to their roles every since, harnessing research to help community development, business development, youth development (the umbrella under which 4-H resides) and so on. Cooperative Extension and land-grant universities are not just for agriculture anymore.

The reason I’m bringing this up is that land grant universities and county cooperative extensions might just be the doorway that entrepreneurs need in order to get their ideas and products out there.

Cornell University, for example, has a Food Venture Center, in Geneva, New York (the main campus of Cornell is in Ithaca, but it has other locations as well). Food Venture Center
They literally can take a New York State entrepreneur who has an idea for a food product all the way from a pot full of whatever this is, all the way through the testing, commercial recipe creation, partnering with processors, getting products inspected and licensed, to marketing and partnering with retailers. This is huge help for someone at the beginning of their business. Now, in Cornell’s case, their Food Venture Center has worked with everyone from Tropicana and V-8 all the way to the New York State Apple Growers Association, all the way down to a lady who showed up with a pot full of her family’s favorite barbecue sauce.

I’m not saying that every land-grant college has a food venture center, but if you have an idea for a product of any sort, it just might be a good idea to contact your county cooperative extension to ask them who might be able to help you at the land-grant institution that they are associated with, and take it from there.

There just might be a business in it.
(photo of Cornell courtesy of Matt Hintsa)

On the face of it, that sounds like something out of a ’say wha?” sort of experience. Doesn’t every place have a farmers market? Someplace?

No. Actually, not. And it’s not like one of those Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland pictures from the 30s where all the kids get together and gosh-darn, come up with the idea of putting on a show to raise money (for, choose one, the school, the town hall, some poor kid who needs to go to the hospital). It’s one thing for a single producer to pull a truck off the side of the road, put up signs in both directions and set up a display of tomatoes and melons. It’s an entirely different thing to develop a farmers market. And even if all the ‘i’s” are dotted, the paperwork is all filed correctly, etc. etc., the farmer’s market might still not succeed.

Here are a few items that are really and truly necessary to have a farmers market (success is another deal):

– A group of producers who are already growing what the local customers would buy AND who are not already over-drawn on other farmers markets in the reasonably close area. If your community doesn’t have one and the neighboring counties DO, there’s a reason for that. It might be that no producers in your county have the time to commit to a farmers market. Or, they might not be in the ‘direct to the consumer’ part of agriculture. Or, they might all be growing commodity items like soybeans, wheat, feedstocks. Or, they might already be going to the other farmers markets and do not have a family member or friendly person who will come out to the farm, pick up the freshly picked produce or the eggs or the dressed chickens or whatever it is, first thing on market day. Nor go to the market location, set up the canopy and the tables and the ice chests or whatever. Nor stay there for the whole market, promote the products, sell, make change, take customer names and emails, and the thousand other things that the individual vendor must do in order to make sure the customers come back next week. Participating in a farmers market takes a lot of person hours. Hours that are taken away from ..oh yes, the farm. For many producers, having a farm stand right at the end of their drive looks like a far better deal. So, question one is: Are there actual farmers (not folks who will go to the wholesalers and buy up yesterday’s green peppers and try to pawn them off as home grown) who are not already committed to a farmers market AND are interested?

– What does the ‘area need’ look like now? How close is the closest farmers market and how often does it operate? Once a week? Twice a week? Is it reachable by public transport? Who is the customer base? If you feel your community needs a farmers market or another farmers market, you have to look at that. We already had several farmers markets in our county at various times of the week, including one that operates downtown two days a week. However, the biggest market at that time operated all the way out at the western end of the county and due to location, had basically no parking and a vendor waiting list that was several years long. So we had access issues and we had vendors who were being shut out. The local cooperative extension was able to make the case that the area could use another farmers market, in an area more accessible, with more parking, and with public transport, one day a week, in a county park. This is now the largest farmers market in the county.

– Do you have an agency or organization that is willing to sponsor a market? This is mostly for organizational and physical location issues. Our local city economic development agency sponsors the downtown markets – they made arrangements to get the street shut to traffic; the park one is sponsored by the county parks department, the county cooperative extension, with an assist from the county public transport, which schedules bus runs into the park, right by the market, on market day. The agency or organization will also need to help the vendors organize themselves into a market group, write bylaws, set fees, define roles and so on. If vendors want to sell processed foods, such as baked goods, jams, jellies, salsa, etc. etc., depending on your state’s Health Department or Agriculture Department rules, the sponsors need to work with those state and local departments in order to get vendors certified, inspected if need be and so on. Again, this is not a Mickey and Judy “Let’s put on a show”.

– Is there a location with visibility and access? Our downtown farmers market has been moved several times over the years and every time it changed location, they lost vendors and customers. They finally moved it in a permanent sort of way several years ago and did lot of promotion and activities on market day to attract people from the 6 square block area. They put the market right next to the court house, on a non-busy little street, which basically was within a two block walk of all the major downtown employers. So, they concentrated the customer base. The county park market has a number of benefits: It’s in an open parking lot that is seen directly from the interstate. There is an exit and entrance right off the interstate right there. There is signage outside the park and inside the park advertising the market and the market developers do a fair amount of ‘activities-based’ promotion to get families to come to the market (bike helmet checks and giveaways, car seat checks, free cookbooks, and so on). The vendors at the park market love that location.

– Is there someone who is willing to put in all the work, usually as a volunteer (unless the sponsoring organization makes it part of that person’s job), to organize the market, collect fees, pay bills, police the situation, act as the face of the market, be the interface between the market, the vendors and state and local agencies and organize and put into play promotional activities, PR and so on? This is a huge issue for markets because vendors want their money to go into activities which put money into their pockets. They really would rather not have to pay for a market manager. Only in large cities or where the market is a ‘destination’ situation where vendors can charge premium prices for their goods and produce, do you find paid market managers. Being a volunteer market manager is a labor of love and burn out is a huge issue. If the market is on weekends, the manager not only has to do work during the week on the market but also has to be there for the market as well. There is a lot of turnover in market managers.

So, let’s say you feel your community could use a farmers market? My best suggestion at that point is to approach your county cooperative extension and ask to speak to the agricultural economic development specialist to talk about it.

(photo of farmers market courtesy of Corey Templeton)

But I digress. As many of Aunt Toby’s readers recall, I have a keen interest in small business, in entrepreneurship, in plain old ‘following your passion’. Although long after the 2010 Winter Olympics has faded from the collective memory, in the chronicles of international curling, I am sure that the growth of interest in the sport is going to be tagged to the pants worn by the Norwegian team this year. But my interest in this story actually is in the company which designed and makes these pants, which are technically golf clothing, Loudmouth Golf.

Brown Alumni magazine

Scott Woodworth, “a graphic designer who lives in Sonoma, California, with his wife, Cathy, and sons, Robert, 13, and Bailey, 14, turned his passion for audacious attire and brightly colored geometric designs into a men’s clothing business targeting a particular subspecies of golfer. “Loud mouth guys may be a little obnoxious,” he says, “but deep down they are good guys. You put those pants on, you are going out to tell jokes and have fun.”

“..After he moved to California, he noticed that golfers there dressed in muted tones. That would have to change. So in 2000 he went to the fabric store, bought a bolt of powder-blue stuff that depicted Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck riding in golf carts, and had a local seamstress make him a pair of pants to wear at a charity golf tourney. “They were horrible looking pants,” he says, “and I loved them. Guys kept asking me all day where I got them.”

He found a clothing manufacturer and ordered seventy-two pairs for his newly formed company, Loudmouth Golf. Six weeks after placing a classified ad in Golf Digest, he’d sold half his inventory. He doubled the next order, and before long he’d drafted his children into helping him pack merchandise from his garage. It was good-bye graphic design and hello clothing business.”

The international interest in the pants crashed Woodward’s server and he is scrambling to restock this particular model, with delivery scheduled for April.

For people who dream of having their own business and who feel that all the ‘needs’ that need to be filled are gone, I’d like to mention that crazy pants for golfers are not necessarily something that screams ‘a need needing to be filled’. What Woodward did, by wearing crazy pants to the tournament and getting comments was actually an unconscious form of focus group testing – on the fly, certainly, but testing nonetheless. Woodward’s advantage was that he also realized that there was a market there (the need) that no one else was doing anything about and that he could fulfill (filling it).

A lot of people would like to start a business, but many times they allow their fears of risk or lack of knowledge to stop them. Woodward was a graphic designer – it is not as if he grew up in the garment business (as Isaac Mizrahi did – Mizrahi’s father owned a dress design and manufacturing business). The difference is that Woodward got on the phone, called around, asked questions, found more people who could answer more questions, found more people who could help him, direct him, show him resources for fabric, sewing, manufacturing and so on. And that’s how he started and has grown his business.

Now, you can be sure that there are people already out there, already in the sports clothing business, who are riffing changes on the Norwegian Curling Team’s pants. Maybe they called up some curlers and asked them if they liked the pants or perhaps what they wanted in pants to curl in? Maybe they are producing them in water repellant fabrics for skiers or snow boarders. Maybe they are producing them with bibs. Or matching jackets. Or matching shirts. or with zippers down the legs. Or glow in the dark? Maybe someone has decided that the whole curling pants thing is a fluke – in Canada, the big deal in curling clothing from what I have heard is colorful sweaters. Maybe someone is going to try to reproduce the diamond motif in a heavyweight sweater. A heavyweight sweater with a zip in the front.

Gad. The opportunities are endless.

Mobile Electronics Repair

The DH heard this story on NPR this week and told me about it – he was fascinated by the major aspect of the story: A guy turning a personal need into a business that is growing like crazy – a mobile ‘small personal electronics repair’ business. From the description above, of people coming up to his van to ask for help when they see the advertising on the side, another thought comes through.

This is the 21st Century version of a hot dog cart. Or the late 19th or early 20th century pushcart guys found in every major city. “Strawberries!!” “Rags..Rags..we buy Rags!!” “Pots and Pans – we fix pots and pans!”

The other thought is this: In the midst of what some economists claim to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, some people have found a way to build a small business based on repairs, which is a very ancient profession indeed.

People who can repair stuff have a skill that is very useful when times are bad because – people are not in the financial situation where they feel comfortable just throwing something away and buying new. Before the ‘throw away economy’ was produced by the Wal-Martization of manufactured goods (and Wal-Mart is not the only ‘villain’ of the piece here – I fully admit that), there were a lot of things that due to the way they were designed and manufactured and the amount of their cost, people would have them fixed. Electronics such as television sets and stereos, shoes, clothing, electronic appliances, small engine goods such as mowers were all the basis of a thriving sector of the economy: Service and Repair.

The cheapening of practically all goods basically put that out of people’s minds. When it costs almost as much (or perhaps even more) to repair than what the item could be purchased for, then it made no monetary sense (we won’t discuss the whole issue of ‘life time cost’ which includes disposal and landfilling) to have something repaired – it only made sense to throw it away and buy something new..whether it was a pair of shoes, a tee shirt, a pair of blue jeans, a toaster, or a laptop.

What Leontaris (and others who are doing the same thing) has found out is that there are a lot of broken small electronics around with owners who actually just want the damn thing repaired. People have become so dependent on their personal electronics that having the item out of their possession for even a couple of days causes upset(how many people do you know who actually wear a wrist watch now? How many people do you know who turn off their cell phones to go on vacation? How many people do you know who have repetitive motion disorder from using their PDA? How many people do you know who refer to their PDA as ‘a Crackberry’).

The other thing is this: The prices of some of these items new have now become high enough that having to replace it now is going to cause a certain amount of ‘wallet pain’.

Enough so that repairing an Iphone makes sense. Even when repairing a cracked screen will set the person back – 10 minutes of time…and $99.00 for parts and service (which is what Leontaris charges). Enough so that Leontaris not only has this mobile business, but a shop where techs repair other items such as laptops and so on that he can’t keep the parts in his van.

I’ve talked before about businesses that got their start or got really growing in the Great Depression. One of the biggest and most famous is HP – Hewlett Packard, which got its start in the Depression in Mr. Hewlett’s garage. In my local area, a safety pin business which was struggling even before the depression (basically because they were trying to compete in what had become a commodity market), took the opportunity to morph themselves into a tool and die manufacturer, which survived on holding the line on costs. They then evolved into an electronics ‘pick and place’ machinery and systems manufacturer and now they are all over the world. Their headquarters is still in my home town here.

Things are very bad right now – let’s not make any mistake. But for people who are interested in ‘finding a need and filling it’ – now is as good – or as bad – a time to start a business as any. Who knows, perhaps you could be someone who can be a success, help people with their needs, and make more jobs for others.

Now THAT’s a plan we can all get behind.

(Ipod clinic photo by Dan Theurer)

The best part of the job, though, was when we were able to place people into jobs. Most of what we did in those days was what was coyly referred to in the jargon of the agency business as ‘temp to perm’ (of course now, it’s more than likely ‘perma-temp’), so I knew that when I asked someone about their business and what was the one person I could find for them that would help them grow, that if I was able to find that person, I was doing a definite ‘good deed’ – I was getting that person a job.

A paycheck. A way to buy groceries and get health benefits for themselves and their family, pay the bills, pay their rent or mortgage. A way for someone to maybe even get a promotion and a raise in pay.

Despite the pay (which was actually not the greatest), I loved that job. I saw it as a homely combination of ‘good deed’ and ‘local economic development’. No matter how frustrating the cold calls or unanswered phone messages were, I always felt that what I was doing was good. At the end of the day, there were people who were genuinely better off for what I was doing.

Right now, there are a tremendous number of people in this country who are NOT better off than they were a year ago. For some of them, their bad times started several years ago and their jobs got offshored someplace or downsized out of existence. And they’ve had to take whatever they can get and it’s probably less than what they made before. And to pay the bills and the mortgage and the orthodonture, they’ve taken on huge levels of debt and whatever job they could find. And for a lot of them, an increasing number have lost their homes and are wandering the countryside, like high tech (and sometimes low tech) Tom Jodes.

And I know there are people out there who feel that it’s ‘all their own faults’ or ‘if they’d kept up they’d still have a job’ or ‘if they’d been smart…” or ‘if they’d worked harder’ or …and so on. And I can tell you, because I come from a place where our local economy was run on the fly-wheel of a huge high tech wonder..which decided one day that they no longer wanted to be in the business that they ran in our little place (and thereby causing over 20,000 people to lose their jobs), that for many many people in this country, they did work very hard, and were very educated and smart, and they did keep up with training, and they did the best they could for their families and their community.
And it didn’t make any difference because it was decisions made thousands of miles away by people who did not care about the families and the community – that is what caused them to lose their jobs.

And for many people at the top of the heap out there, that is an appropriate thing – free market competition, movement of capital and assets to the lowest cost areas and so on and so forth. But for the millions of people who are either now out of work or who have not been able to get a job in their fields for the last 5 years, it is not an appropriate thing.

It is bitter and it is demeaning and it sucks the very life out of the soul of people and of a community and out of the country.

And right now, we have an administration which really is struggling to do something right. It might not be what all of us admire or believe in or accept or agree with. But they really are trying to do the most good for the most people, because that is what is required now. But the economy is not responding, at least at the community and personal levels, the way people need. Because..people need jobs. There are millions of people out of work already..and this spring, there are millions more young people who are graduating from colleges and graduate schools..and they don’t have jobs either.

And maybe Aunt Toby’s readers do a lot of charity work already, and for that I thank you sincerely. But at the moment, charity is not just what we need. What we have the greatest need for right now are industrial and commercial patriots.

The greatest, most patriotic thing anyone who owns or manages a business can do right now is not to lay off workforce – ask your employees to find ways to save money, work smarter, to keep everyone working and paid. Additionally, if you can find a place in your operation, an even greater good would be to find one person who can help you grow and hire that person. Even if it is a young person with little experience but a lot of energy. Even if you are a plumber and all the young person could do would be to crouch next to you and learn. To give one additional person a job, teach them a skill, give them the opportunity to help you grow and be more productive and competitive – that would help your business..would help the economy…would help the country.

And all you bankers who got the bail outs – it’s time for you to step up and start lending to business. We all know that you are hoarding the money that the tax payers gave to you. Many of you are using it to buy up other distressed banks. The country needs you to be patriotic too – help business grow – give them credit.

A lot of talk out there about patriotism revolves around the phrase ‘love of country’ – we need to love the people in the country, too. And for that, we need to help business grow, so that they can hire people HERE so that payrolls flow out into the community and help other businesses in the communities. That is when people at the local level will honestly know..in their very bones..that the recession is over.
(photos courtesy of diP and Joan Thewlis)

And my father gave his notice, jumped on the first train back to New York and he and his father spent the next two weeks running around Manhatten, with my grandfather pawning my grandmother’s diamond earrings, calling in every ‘marker’ he had to get paperwork done, a passport, a cheap ticket on what proved to be an old troop steamer, and basically threw my father on the boat to go off into the world. My father arrived in Glasgow the day before the Germans invaded Poland and he did not get back to the US for 6 years; in the meantime, he finished his degree, got his license to practice in Scotland, met and married my mother(and keeping it secret) and having what he described as the happiest time of his life.

Luck? No. Timing and being willing to take the risk.

Our IT work at my employment is done by a guy who started out at his company as a technician. It was a pretty small company then, just the owner and three techs. After a couple of years, our tech got married and he and his wife decided to have a baby. Soon after the happy event was announced, things started to go really sour at his company. The owner lacked, shall we say, communication skills. They were losing customers left and right. It’s not that the techs were not doing their jobs; as a matter of fact, some of the customers were coming to them and telling them to basically lock up the boss so that they would not have to deal with him. It was either that, or they would pull the contracts. The techs were desperate – by this time, all of them were married; one of them had bought a house. Our guy was going to become a father in a couple of months and because their boss was frankly a jerk, they were going to lose their jobs. They did the only thing they could think of – they ran around asking their in-laws and a friendly banker if they’d loan the guys money to buy out the owner. How they managed to convince this guy to take the money is beyond me, but he did. The company now has 50 employees.

Luck? No. Timing and being willing to take the risk. Yes, they already had customers and they knew that unlike the boss, they had the sort of communication skills to keep customers. But it was still a risk for three young guys.

Right now is very scary. Very. Very. Scary. But even in the very worst of times, there are opportunities around for people who can keep their heads straight. Those young guys could have taken the position that they had jobs….and allowed the company to fall apart around them and lose their jobs. But they did not. They decided the way to deal with the uncertainty was to get some control over their situations. They pooled their resources.

In terms of my father’s situation, he got a hand up from his father, but he also understood that this was his one chance and he allowed his passion and love carry him through.

Do you have something you have always wanted to do? Have you always wanted to have a business? Believe it or not, now is just as good a time as any to put in the work to do it. Find a need and fill it – fill your days with the best that you know how to do for your customers and yourself. And then you can do the one thing that will help the US economy – better than anything else.

When you grow enough to the point where it’s driving you crazy – make a job and hire someone else.

And THAT will help the US economy grow.