BY CANDACE MOODY
A 2007 survey of women business owners commissioned by the Jacksonville (FL) Women’s Business Center showed that women business owners in Northeast Florida far exceed the national average for businesses with revenues of $1 million or more. In fact, the data show that 13 percent of Jacksonville’s women business owners have revenues of $1 million, compared with 3 percent of women in business nationally.
| |
 |
| |
Sandy Bartow |
Sandy Bartow, executive director of the Jacksonville Women’s Business Center, was as surprised as anyone by the findings.
“We always knew we had something special here, but no one would have predicted we’d see results like this,” she says. Then, she smiles and adds, “We asked the researchers to double-check the numbers.”
Jacksonville is not the Florida most people expect. But, this city situated on the St. Johns River in the northeast corner of the state has spent the past couple of decades exceeding expectations. This socalled “second-tier city” has managed to obtain an NFL franchise (the Jacksonville Jaguars) and host a Super Bowl (Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005).
The population of the seven-county region surrounding Jacksonville is about 1.2 million, and the average age of its citizens — 37.2 years — is significantly younger than the Florida average. The climate is coastal rather than tropical, with several freezes a year during the winter months, and the region hosts many fewer tourists, retirees and “snowbirds,” or seasonal residents, than you see in South\ Florida. The area population is growing at a steady and manageable pace, with 50 percent of the new residents relocating to take advantage of employment opportunities.
JACKSONVILLE’S WOMEN’S BUSINESS COMMUNITY
Jacksonville launched its Women’s Business Center in 2004 as an initiative of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce. Since its inception, the Jacksonville Women’s Business Center has served more than 1,100 women entrepreneurs at every stage of business development, from women ready to get started on their great idea to women with multi-million- dollar operations.
In 2007, the organization decided to commission original research to establish baseline data on women-owned businesses. Jacksonville University partnered with the Center for Women’s Business Research in Washington, DC, to design and deliver the survey and analyze results. The resulting data impressed everyone involved with the study.
The survey was designed to develop a profile of the “average” woman business owner in Jacksonville and the surrounding six counties. Surveyors interviewed companies with women ownership of 50 percent or more so that the data would be comparable to national statistics. The study results show that the average woman business owner in Northeast Florida is 50 years old and has a college degree or at least some college; she’s been in business for five years or more, and she operates her business outside the home with gross sales of more than $2.5 million. The accompanying economic impact analysis indicated that the economic impact of women-owned businesses in the region was a whopping $18.8 billion.
| |
 |
| |
Nadine Gramling |
So, what do Jacksonville and the surrounding area have that other regions of the country don’t?
NADINE GRAMLING
Nadine Gramling is a Jacksonville business owner who has started and sold several companies. If you ask her, she’ll tell you that the strong foundation of caring people in Jacksonville makes a difference.
From 1978 until 2000, Gramling was president and CEO of Southeastern Metals Manufacturing Co., a manufacturer and distributor of metal products for the building construction industry. In 1963, at the age of 17, she was hired as a secretary at Southeastern, joining the company just four months after it had opened its doors. Two decades later, in 1984, she and coworkers bought the company for $2.5 million. She sold the company for $35 million in 1997.
Gramling believes that the local business owners care not only about their own success, but also about their competitors’ success.
“We are a small market,” she explains. “You can’t afford not to be nice to your competition.” In fact, Jacksonville, by its own definition, is the ‘smallest big city you’ll ever encounter.’ The growth of the past 20 years has not diminished the close-knit business community’s willingness to help newcomers.
SUZANNE LEMEN
That’s also the impression of Suzanne Lemen of Dynamic Corporate Solutions, a 1993 startup that offers a full-range of human resources (HR) consulting.
Lemen says she never intended to become an entrepreneur. Her last corporate job in banking involved assembling a team of internal consultants to redesign HR processes. Her work on the multi-year project and the team’s recommendations saved the company $6 million, her manager informed her — right before he laid her off.
| |
 |
| |
Suzanne Lemen |
As it turned out, the assignment was great preparation for building an enterprise that could provide the same service for other companies. Although Lemen’s business experience was slim, her relationships in the city were strong, and she set out on her own. One of her first clients was another woman entrepreneur who gave Lemen a chance to show what she could do before she had a proven track record. By 1999, Lemen had achieved a million in sales with just a handful of employees.
In Lemen’s opinion, Jacksonville is a city “where ‘community’ means something.”
By at least one measure, the city’s business owners invest heavily in the community. In 2007, the Women Business Owners of North Florida, a 150-member association, surveyed its members about community service. The survey found that 89.7 percent of the members volunteer on a regular basis (30 percent volunteered over 11 hours per month). By comparison, only 56 percent of the general population of Jacksonville and 26.4 percent of the general population nationwide volunteer on a regular basis. More than 76 percent of the Women Business Owners of North Florida members surveyed said they believe that their volunteer efforts have helped their businesses grow.
Lemen affirms that the key to success in Jacksonville is building relationships. She says she receives many professional referrals from the women with whom she volunteers, and she spends valuable time connecting other women to people who can help them. There’s a tradition in the city, she says, of referring newcomers to people in the community that can help them build a network.
In fact, she says she receives several calls each year from strangers who say, “I’m new in town, and everyone I meet says I should meet you if I want to get started in HR.” Lemen has never turned down any of these requests. She’s also spent time with her competitors, giving them advice and sharing resources. She shrugs off the “nice” label just as quickly as she shrugs off the “achiever” label; she says she simply doesn’t think about why she succeeds or why she is willing to offer help to competitors.
“It’s just who we are here,” she explains. “This is a warm climate in every sense of the word.”
ZELDA FRADEN
When Zelda Fraden’s Jacksonville-based family business was hit by a tornado, it lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a matter of seconds.
| |
 |
| |
Zelda Fraden |
Fraden is president of a third-generation fresh produce delivery company established in 1902. One hundred and two years later, in 2004, Hurricane Bonnie spun off a tornado that touched down in Northwest Jacksonville at 3:00 in the afternoon — about an hour after the Fraden Produce employees had left for the day. The twister tossed 18-wheelers onto their sides, destroyed cars parked in the lot, and peeled the roof off the company’s warehouse.Tons of fresh produce, and the coolers that housed it, were destroyed.
Zelda’s first calls were to her employees, most of whom hurried back to assess damage and salvage inventory. Her next calls were to customers: the restaurants, the school systems, and the offices that depended upon receiving fresh fruits and vegetables from Fraden on a daily basis.
“I told them not to worry,” Fraden says, “although I had no idea how we were going to get them their produce the next day.” Since the tornado was localized, most customers on the south side of Jacksonville had no idea that the north side had been hit.
Within hours, one customer called back to tell the family that he had cooler space to offer. Fraden's staff loaded trucks from the one remaining operational loading dock and transferred inventory to the temporary space. The customer, an exporter, allowed Fraden to use the loading docks between his own loads at no cost. Working around the clock, Fraden Produce managed to make every delivery to its customers. Many companies that normally demanded precise delivery times allowed Fraden to deliver whenever the trucks could get there.
Within a month, the Fradens got another call, this time from another produce company: Do you need more space? Fraden Produce was asked, and indeed, they did. For the next four months, Fraden Produce shared space and loading docks with one of its direct competitors, an arrangement that went remarkably well, considering the intense nature of the business.
“If you miss a delivery,” Zelda Fraden says, “you can lose a customer in a minute. They can’t afford not to have fresh produce; they’ll just move on to another company.
However, Fraden did not lose a single customer; in fact, the company landed a large new account during this time. Zelda Fraden says she never wants to live through a disaster like the tornado again. But, if she had to, “I’m so glad it was in this city, with this kind of people.”
| |
 |
| |
Dea Sims |
DEA SIMS
Business Owner Dea Sims started Promo Depot, a company that provides customized marketing and promotional items in 1996. She hit the million-dollar mark within three and a half years, in part thanks to mentoring from women who had been in business for a while. She believes in paying that mentoring forward.
“If I can help someone avoid an error that I made, or capitalize on an opportunity I wasn’t able to, I want to do what I can,” Sims says. “There really is something special about Jacksonville; I’ve been in other cities that just didn’t have this built-in support system.”
LESSONS FROM JACKSONVILLE
What can other cities take away from the Jacksonville study results? Perhaps it’s that community matters to the success of women business owners. Being able to establish a network of friends and mentors that become customers can be an important factor in building a successful business.
One reason the Jacksonville Women’s Business Center funded the 2007 study was to understand entrepreneurial needs so it could build appropriate programs and services and measure the effect of programs, such as the Business Advisory Councils, on business success.
The Business Advisory Councils are peerto- peer mentoring roundtables designed to enable business owners who are in comparable stages of corporate growth to share ideas, participate in creative brainstorming, network, build support systems, and increase one another’s confidence.
The groups are divided into three categories: the Emerging Business Advisory Council, with annual gross member revenues of up to $100,000; the Growth Business Advisory Council, with annual gross member revenues of $100,000 to $1 million; and the Accomplished Business Advisory Council, with annual gross member revenues of more than $1 million. The Accomplished group in Jacksonville has 13 members who meet on a regular basis.
| CANDACE MOODY is a public relations professional and writer living in Jacksonville, FL. She writes a monthly column on career and employment issues for the (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union and can be contacted at cmoody@worksourcefl.com. |
 |
By providing a forum for women business owners to build relationships and trust, the Jacksonville Women’s Business Center plans to continue its success in growing million-dollar companies along the banks of the St. Johns River.
Editor's Note: To learn more, contact the Jacksonville Women’s Business Center, 5000-3 Norwood Ave., Jacksonville, FL 32208 (904-924-1100, ext. 252) or visit www.myjaxchamber.com and click on "Women's Business Center."
(This article is reprinted from Vol. 9, No. 2 of Enterprising Women magazine. Copyright 2008, Enterprising Women Inc. Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited, except by express permission of the publisher. Would you like to comment on this article? Send a note to our editors.)
|
