Small business owners talk growth, survival and winning practices

HomeInside FCNewsSmall business owners talk growth, survival and winning practices

January 19/26, 2015; Volume 28/Number 15

By Amanda Haskin

Small businesses are the driving force of the U.S. economy, with over 28 million in operation in the U.S. According to the Small Business Administration, approximately 543,000 new small businesses start each month, generating more than 65% of the new jobs created in America since 1995. New entrepreneurs are popping up everywhere, local manufacturing is surging, and supporting small businesses and shopping locally has become a fundamental part of many people’s value systems.

But when people talk about small businesses, especially in terms of trends and operating procedures, they typically focus on urban entities. They rarely focus on the businesses in small, rural towns.

There are a number of advantages that come from running a business in a small community. Rural entrepreneurs can benefit from a deeper understanding of their local markets, more efficient word-of-mouth marketing, and lower rents and operating costs. On the other hand, there are many obstacles that rural retailers must overcome in order to survive, such as lower customer volume, geography and competition from big box stores.

To get an inside look into what keeps these rural businesses on their feet, FCNews asked small business owners to share their unique stories and perspectives.

Joey Conatser, Gator Carpet, Edgewater, Fla.

Joey Conatser was sitting on his back porch one night 19 years ago when he had an epiphany. He looked over at his wife and said, “Write this down. We’re going into carpet.” She did write it down, and that Monday morning he went into the carpet business.

Conatser, who had owned a video rental store in Edgewater for 22 years and sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door prior to that, knew nothing about the carpet industry. But the video business was tanking, so he had nothing to lose.

A friend hooked him up with a carpet installer, and, one week later, Conatser was laying carpet for the first time. Then he was introduced to a tile expert, then a wood expert and the rest is history. He opened up Gator Carpet (previously known as Gator Carpet & Videos), and has been in business ever since.

Perhaps Conatser, who lives on a farm with his wife, two kids, three grandkids, horses and chickens, was destined to be a small business owner. Originally from Oneida, Tenn., he watched his family business, Conatser’s Department Store, go under as soon as Walmart came to town. Bankrupt, his grandparents moved to a small condo in Edgewater, and Conatser followed without a cent to his name.

Today he works alone in his 5,000-square-foot store six days a week with only Christmas and Thanksgiving off. If someone calls and needs a space measured, he will shut down the store for an hour to go measure it himself. His business is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., but if someone can’t make it in during regular hours he has been known to stay open until 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., sleeping in the store if necessary. But you will never find him working on a Sunday. “Sundays are always reserved for church and the beach.”

One of Conatser’s biggest challenges is purely geographical—a significant percentage of his community is out of town six months out of the year. When asked how he deals with this seemingly large obstacle, he answered, “You store what you can, like a bear going into hibernation.”

The key to his business’ survival has been word of mouth. “When I go into a neighborhood to [work on] a home, my goal is to do three homes in that neighborhood. I want to churn out that job and have my customer tell [her] neighbors, ‘Hey, you’ve got to go see Joey.’ And that’s how I’ve been here 19 years.”

In fact, Conatser hardly does any advertising, nor does he have a website. Word of mouth, as well as an ideal location right on Edgewater’s major highway, have kept him going. But he believes that what truly keeps him in business is simple honesty. “You just can’t fool the public,” he said. “Honesty is the only policy.”

When asked about the importance of small businesses in today’s society, he passionately declared, “We’re the backbone of America. You take us away and leave a bunch of millionaires, the country’s going to hell in a hand basket in two or three days.”

Mike May, May’s Lone Star Flooring, Atlanta, Texas

“Boy, I sure got myself mingled into something else,” realized Mike May while he tried to piece together his company’s jumbled timeline.

Before May took over Lone Star, it floated between Raney’s Carpet and Woods Flooring since 1957. The Woods family started the business, Roy Raney took it over in 1987, the Woods family bought it back in 1998, and then sold it back to Raney in 2003 when they decided to go into the furniture business.

Raney tried to get out of the business in 2009 again by selling it to May, but he didn’t get very far. Today, the company is owned by May, but Raney has since come back to work for him. As May said, “Once you get into this business you just can’t seem to get out of it.”

May has been in the flooring business for 30 years, starting at the age of 15 as a stock boy at a Sherwin Williams that sold flooring products. He moved up to assistant manager, store manager, and then opened his own floor covering store in Hope, Ark. In 1997 he decided to go into installations full time. But installations eventually became challenging for him after having surgery to repair an old knee injury he got in the army reserve. So when Raney approached him about taking over the store, he jumped on it.

Today, May’s Lone Star Flooring is “an extremely good business in an extremely small town,” as Raney put it. May has an expert, handpicked installation team, but still does the occasional installation when he has to. Besides himself and Raney, he has a small store staff and is quick to include his 11-year-old daughter, Cary Beth, who has proven to be an adept measurer on jobs.

Speaking to the challenges of doing business in a small town, May said, “The biggest challenge is convincing people through advertising and word of mouth to just give you the opportunity to earn their business. It’s taken two to three years to gain the reputation that we have now. Now we’re in a position to make sure the 5,000 people here in Atlanta think of us when they need floors.”

But May made it clear that he hasn’t succeeded by just relying on the population of Atlanta alone. “I make a lot of sales calls. You have to hustle pretty well to keep the business going.”

As a result of this hustling his business has extended into Dallas and as far as Louisiana and Arkansas. “We can’t rely on this small town alone. Atlanta is 5,000 people, but if you take a 50-mile radius, well then you’re looking at over 100,000 people. You have to go outside the box.”

At the end of the day, it always comes down to personalized service. “We go above and beyond, and that’s why people keep coming back to us and recommending us to others.”

David Labbe, Nadeau’s House of Flooring, Fort Kent, Maine

David Labbe’s father started Nadeau’s House of Furniture 40 years ago. His name was Ellery, but everyone called him “Arms” because he was a great pitcher. (Not to be confused with his brother, Emery, who was nicknamed “Legs” because he was a great base runner.)

In 1976 Arms Labbe purchased the business after having worked there as a sales representative. Established in 1882, it had been a general store, selling everything from sporting goods to caskets. He sold all but the furniture and appliances, and added a flooring department five years later. Together with his sons—David, Patrick and Philip—he created a successful and reputable family business that remained on Main Street and flourished until it burned down in a fire two years ago.

David Labbe had previously separated himself from the furniture department, running a flooring business out of a space behind his dad’s store. All of Main Street was destroyed in the fire, including the 18,000-square-foot Nadeau’s House of Furniture, but the flooring store in the back survived, damaged but miraculously still standing.

“It was March 25 at midnight,” David Labbe recalled. “When I got the phone call, I looked out my bedroom window and I saw the glow. As I ran down the street, all I could think about was the young family with a baby living in one of the apartments above the business. When I got there, I saw the family standing in the street; the woman had the baby in one arm and a cat in the other. We were all in tears.”

The building that housed Nadeau’s House of Furniture was 138 years old.

David Labbe never closed his doors throughout the rebuilding process. It took him a couple of weeks to fix the roof and the façade, but then it was back to business as usual. Now he continues his family’s legacy.

Fort Kent is just across the St. John River from Canada, so his percentage of Canadian clientele has always fluctuated with the exchange rate. Previously, he had hardly any Canadian business when the rate was 45 cents to the dollar. Now that the rate is in his favor, he estimated that a good 12% of his business comes from Canada.

Of course, the appearance of big box stores has also been an obstacle for him. There are two large retail outlets within an hour from Fort Kent, and he feels their presence, especially when dealing with a younger generation of buyers.

“People today care less about service and more about the bottom line. It’s definitely more difficult today, but I deal with it as a new challenge in the field that I’m in. It all comes down to educating people, giving them incentive to buy here and not go outside of town.”

Fort Kent’s motto is “The Little Town That Could.” Well, you could call Nadeau’s House of Flooring “The Little Business That Could.” It grew organically out of a 40-year-old business, survived the fire, pulled the family business’ name out of the ashes and continues to prosper today.

 

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