Home business entrepreneurs enter into new businesses, including glycerin luffa soap, a home typesetting business and a home health food bakery.
If you now operate, or have ever operated, a successful home business that was inspired by an article you read in MOTHER, tell us about it in around 500 words (write to THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS Hendersonville, North Carolina): Be sure to mention when and where you started your venture and with how much “seed money”; what you make (net), and anything else that might be of assistance to other entrepreneurs. If your story is used in this column, you’ll receive [1] the satisfaction of knowing that you may help someone else start a business and [2] a free two-year new or renewal subscription to THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS®.
For the past five years, after starting with an initial
investment of $1,650, my family and I have been
manufacturing a product called Lufa-Nutra, consisting of a
3-1/2-ounce bar of unscented glycerin soap with a luffa
sponge embedded right in the top. The combination quickly
proved popular with such folks as backpackers and
long-range bicycle travelers.
Unfortunately, as sales increased, we found we couldn’t
raise enough luffas to keep up . . . and we couldn’t find
enough other growers, either, until “For Luffa or Money!”
(MOTHER EARTH NEWS issue 68, page 126) made my dream business a practical
reality. As it happened, you see, I was placing ads in
newspapers trying to locate luffa growers when that piece
appeared, and MOM’s article inspired enough people to bring
me plenty of responses. Soon I had all the lufa suppliers I
could possibly use, and the profits from our business
really started rolling in. The net gain for this past year,
in fact, was $20,000 . . . and we’re moving the business
from an acre plot to a 110-acre farm.
In case anyone would like to try our product, the current
price for a bar of LufaNutra is $2.50, postpaid, and we’ll
ship anywhere in the U.S. Readers ordering more than one
bar can have them for $2.00 apiece plus UPS shipping
charges. To obtain further information–or to get a
wholesale price list–send along a self-addressed,
stamped envelope.
Stefania Scoggins
LufaNutra
Dept. TMEN
Templeton, California
For a long time I’d wanted some extra income . . . but I
knew that second jobs usually demand too many hours for too
little pay. Besides, I needed something I could schedule as
I pleased, not some form of third-shift drudgery. I’m a
carpenter, and pretty handy in lots of ways, but taking on
such side work as home remodeling jobs requires equipment,
insurance, employees, and hassles. I was at a loss
until I started reading the Bootstrap Businesses
column in MOM. At that point I got smart and began to think
small.
About that time my brother, who’s a real estate agent,
mentioned to me that one of his company’s vacant houses had
been broken into. The vandals had kicked in a door, and
there was now no way to lock the house. Well, I volunteered
to go over that day and mend the door. It took three hours
to repair the portal.
At my brother’s suggestion, I sent a bill to the man who
owned the agency, and soon received reimbursement for the
cost of the materials, plus $45 for labor. Better yet, his
secretary invited me to do similar work for the company on
a regular basis. I got all the repair jobs not only on his
agency’s listings, but also on repossessed homes that he
bought for improvement and resale.
Well, with all of that going on, I soon had more side work
than I could handle . . . at $15 an hour. And the only
investment I’d made was putting $250 in a separate checking
account to buy materials. That was soon earned back, of
course, and my business is bringing in the extra cash I
need plus the flexibility in hours that’s necessary to make
my new enterprise a pleasure.
Thanks, MOM, for starting me thinking “small”.
Steve Wyatt
Dallas, Texas
After reading–in the Bootstrap Businesses column in
MOTHER NO. 49–the letters from two folks who had
started their own typesetting businesses, my husband and I
agreed to establish a similar enterprise of our own . . .
at home. I’d had several years of experience typesetting
for newspapers, and knew that this sort of job could be a
moneymaker, so we signed the purchase papers for an IBM
composer and nervously anticipated the arrival of that
$10,000 machine.
However, I then received a call from a local printer who
had typesetting equipment but no typesetter, and he
wondered if I’d be interested in bidding on a major job.
Well, that arrangement proved so satisfactory that I
canceled our equipment order and now set type on a
freelance basis. With absolutely no investment, overhead,
or long-term commitment, I can earn anywhere from
$6.00 to $18.00 per hour . . . charging by the job.
Furthermore, my schedule is very flexible . . . a fact that
makes the business ideal for a working mother. And since
I’m self-employed, I can set up the same business almost
anywhere we might decide to move. It’s been the perfect way
to bring in a second income, and I hope another
MOTHER-reading mother can use the idea.
Sylvia Fox
Flagstaff, Arizona
Down here in Mexico, bringing in money is a continuous
problem for most people. However, many of the local folks
really know how to make do with less: Barter and
bootstrapping are alive and well south of the border.
And–between my neighbors and MOM–some of that
ingenuity has rubbed off on me.
While my husband was attending medical school in Mexico
City, our budget was stretched to the breaking point.
However, when my grandmother passed her well-read
collection of THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS® along to me and I
happened upon “How to Start a Home Bakery of Your Own”
(MOTHER EARTH NEWS issue 37, page 46) . . . I headed straight for the kitchen!
Since I’d already had rave reviews on my granola and whole
wheat loaves, I knew it was time to try to cash in on my
cooking.
There’s a great demand for American-style health food in
Mexico City, but not a very good supply of such edibles, so
I had an excellent market with little competition. And my
initial investment was only $12.40 . . . which went to
purchase the makings of five kilos of granola and three
loaves of bread.
Well, within my first 24 hours in my home health food bakery business, I’d sold the
whole batch, and it soon became obvious that word of mouth
was the only advertising I needed to get all the orders I
could handle.
To add variety to my line of offerings, though, I bartered
with a friend who sold Mennonite cheese. We traded granola
and cheese, kilo for kilo. And since my cereal cost me only
$2.00 per kilo to make, that was my cost for the cheese as
well.
After that, my weekly sales averaged about 15 kilos of
granola at $4.30 a kilo (net profit $34.50), 8 loaves of
bread at $1.50 each (net $5.60), and 4 kilos of cheese at
$4.30 apiece (net $9.20) . . . for a net total of $49.30 a
week. And with the oven on so much, we also kept our
otherwise heatless apartment cozy (and smelling delicious),
while that same warmth more than paid for itself.
Muchas gracias, MAMITA!
Connie S. Penrod de Sias
Oginaga, Chihuahua, Mexico
