Home Business Success

Deb Steinberg of Nickers & Neighs

In 1995, my husband and I moved to the country, where I could once again indulge my horse interests. We still worked in the city, and had a 70 mile one-way commute to work each day! I wanted to own my own business, and thought about lots of different ventures, but never seemed to find the right thing.

Then, one day in 1997, I was searching online to buy a gift for a horsey friend in California, and couldn't find anything that was reasonably priced or attractive. That became the idea for my business, Nickers & Neighs.

During our long commute each day, my husband and I planned, schemed and discussed how to make this idea a reality. After exhaustive research of our target market, competition and the reality of building an ecommerce site, I wrote my business plan and worked with an SBA consultant before submitting it for a $30,000 SBA loan.

I worked very hard on every little aspect of the business, from the name and logo design, to the look of our website and the content features we offered. The merchandise we sold had to be unique, well-made and reasonably priced, and I turned down more merchandise than I selected.

Nickers & Neighs' website launched in April of 1998, with 104 products. We kept all the inventory in one bedroom of our house, and used another room as the office.

At first, we really did believe it would be an "If you build it... they will come." The reality was that websites don't become successful overnight.

My biggest challenges were learning how to market my site, since I am more "service driven" than "sales driven". My years of experience managing over 300 employees helped me tremendously in the areas of customer service, and exceeding customer's expectations. The first 2 years were tough, as we learned about accounting, marketing, and turning visitors to the site into buyers.

I still worked at my job in the city, and filled orders and handled customer service issues at night. Our inventory kept growing, and we soon offered over 300 items. The company took over the house, as more rooms were used for warehouse.

At the end of 1999, I quit my full-time job and began working just at my business. I traveled to horse shows and set up a vendor booth in addition to our website, and that helped generate more income for the company.

It also helped to promote the website. We still weren’t actually making money, but the company managed to pay its bills. But the company increased sales by 40% each year, and in 2000, we achieved over $150,000 in sales and turned a profit!

However, by the end of the year 2000, my business had completely taken over our house, and there were only 2 rooms that weren’t being used for inventory, packing supplies, or files.

It was obvious that the company needed its own warehouse and office. We were able to sell our place and bought another property that had a home, warehouse space and store front on a busy highway. Finally, my company had its own buildings!

We enlarged and finished out the store front building and opened the first Nickers & Neighs retail location in June of this year. So we now have a retail store in addition to the website.

My store and warehouse are still on my property, so technically this is still a home based business. I can look out my store window and see my horses grazing in the small pasture in the back.

We are on track to achieve almost $200,000 in sales this year and should be paying off the balance of the SBA loan within 8 months. At that point, we will truly be profitable and I will be paid a salary!

In retrospect, the best advice I can give to any woman interested in starting her own business is PERSEVERE! It will be harder than anything you’ve ever done, but it will also be the most rewarding thing you’ve ever done.

Do enough research on the front end to insure that there is a need for your product/service, and research your competitors enough to determine how you will do it better, cheaper or faster. Ask for help when you need it.

Use the services of the SBA and SCORE they are there for you and can really help you through the learning curve! Look at every obstacle as a learning opportunity, and do everything you can to delight and exceed your customers’ expectations. Good luck!