Rubbingnickels.com loves it when a Mom starts a business at home. We hope our Cottage Industry guests will inspire all of you to get something started and help bringing in the bacon. There are always challenges, but the feeling of contributing towards your family’s financial health is empowering.

This week, we chatted online with Teri Schulist, who started a business at home called School-Pak, Inc. It has been a Woman/Mom-owned business in Milwaukee, WI since 1991. You can visit her website and check out her goodies at www.schoolpak.com. This is a great service and can keep you from spending that dreaded day in August, taking the tour of Target, Walmart, Aaron Brothers and Office Depot to get all the darn supplies your kids need.

Tell us about your business: Schoolpak takes the teachers’ supply lists and packages all the items for moms and dads, saving them multiple trips to stores looking for hard-to-find items.

Why did you start this business? I was shopping for our son’s school supplies and found so many parents having the same frustrations I had. I felt that families could do better things at the end of summer instead of getting stressed out.

What is your background? I was a shift supervisor for patient registration at a major Milwaukee hospital.

What skills did you need to acquire for your new endeavor? Mainly accounting and purchasing. I had no experience with either. I learned how to forecast products, lead times for delivery, how to keep track of it all, pay bills, report taxes, just about everything about running a business without ever having done it before.

Biggest challenges? Finding enough time to get it all done. My husband was in charge of sales and production. It was difficult dealing with manufacturers when we were so small. We were kind of ignored.

What have you learned and advice to others: Go for it. While it’s stressful at some times of the year (paying bills!) the freedom to make decisions and change an industry can’t be measured. My husband and I are 24/7 in the business and in our private lives and having a great time. Since we’re together all day, our evening conversations very seldom have to deal with work. When one of us falls into that, the other just says, “blah, blah, blah, blah”. We then move on to home life.

Thanks, Teri and good luck with your Cottage Industry!

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Here is an excerpt from an interview we did with Rhonda Sparks, founder of UV skinz. Rubbingnickels.com is looking for home-based business owners to share their business start-up experiences with us for our Cottage Industries feature. Please contact us from our home page if you have a story you’d like to share. We hope you learn from and enjoy her story.

1. Give us your elevator pitch:
   UV Skinz manufactures UV protective swim shirts and clothing for the entire family (sizes 6m to 4XL) and make it a top priority to provide the most fun, fashionable and affordable sun protection around! Most people don’t realize that over 1.3 million cases of skin cancer will be diagnosed this year; 1 in 5 Americans. Or that one severe sunburn as a child more than doubles the risk of getting skin cancer as an adult. We want to help change these statistics by raising awareness about the need for proper sun protection.

2. Why did you start this business?
   My husband was diagnosed with malignant melanoma at the young age of 27 and we lost him to the disease five years later. Once Darren was diagnosed with skin cancer, we became ultra aware of sun protection and made sure to keep our three young boys protected the best way we could. We soon realized that we needed to come up with something lightweight and breathable so that kids and adults alike would feel comfortable wearing shirts all day long in the sun.

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