It seems ironic but also natural that this year Mother's Day and Small Business Day fall on the same day, May 10th. Starting a business is much like beginning a family, starting with a scary but exciting dream and resulting in unexpected adventures, joys and sometimes heartaches and tough decisions.
My story includes all of those. From a corporate job in Boston selling to universities, my husband and I spent many happy hours and weekends discussing what businesses we might start—research, consulting and then we stumbled on what was new at that time—halogen lighting for the home. Reading lights with an industrial flair became our “Read in Bed Light.” Later we found or designed lighting for home offices, family rooms, and more. Our slogan became “Tool for Serious Readers.” Customers called wanting more—desks, dictionary stands, file storage, bookcases. We found fine woodworkers and metalsmiths, then sculptors, calligraphers, and other craftspeople who shared our passion.
We had our first son just after our first mail order catalog dropped. We could only take checks; each day we waited like expectant parents for our mail carrier.
We answered every call—sometimes during mealtimes or after bedtimes. Once I took a call while nursing our baby, and the customer asked how old our child was. She’d seen through my attempt at professionalism—we were certainly a small business.
As our business grew, we were fortunate to have a second son before our sourcing became mainly overseas. We did lean on family to help with childcare and on friends to cook us dinner as we sorted catalogs by zip code to carry to our local post office. As the children and our business grew, we moved from Boston to Florida to get more space and be in a more agreeable climate for holiday shipping deadlines. Luckily my brother Eric moved down and helped with packages and sometimes babysitting. My father-in-law Lenny often fetched them from school, while my parents stood in during overseas sourcing trips. My sister Lynn helped make sure our home had holiday decorations and gifts.
Our sons will attest to our incessant stops at antique stores to find products to reproduce or improve. They came along to many trade shows and helped us create our annual event called PenFest, featuring vendors, handwriting analysts and calligraphy classes. They listened to us discuss most every new product idea, business issue and opportunities. Today, they still offer their skills in finance, languages (both foreign and computer), and try out products we are considering.
While I thought starting a business would allow me to be more creative, to work in a more rewarding field by supporting readers and writers, and to do it with my life partner, Steve, I never foresaw that my business and my children would also grow along together. We’ve seen many countries, many factories, many warehouses and trade shows together.
Our goal was and still is to create a work environment that allows other families, including our employees and customers, to thrive and share their passions for reading, writing and creative expression with others. With this reminiscence, I wish all mothers, sisters, aunties, entrepreneurs and women friends a beautiful holiday.
Lori Granger Leveen
Levenger Co-Founder