It’s easy for Gem Barcoding Inc. Vice President Michael Gemma to talk
about the early days of his business now, reclining in his sun-splashed
office overlooking Post Road in Warwick.
Easy because the business he started in his Danbury, Conn. home five
years ago has ripened into a $2 million per year enterprise, with the
future looking as bright as the white walls of his work space.
But the early days were rough.
“I didn’t have anything,” he recalls. “The phones weren’t ringing. The
customers weren’t returning my callsweren’t responding to anything I was
sending out. You look at (us) now and we’re successful and we’ve got
everything we ever wanted, but in those days, you got nothing.”
Gemma’s story is nothing new. Some of the nation’s biggest businesses
started just as he did. Cabletron Systems, for example, exploded from an
Ashland, Mass. garage into a $1.3 billion business. But Gemma does
represent an increasing number of people starting businesses at home.
Some 7.7 million businesses were operated out of homes in 1997,
according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics – up from 2.1 million
in 1981.
For the successful home-business owner, the experience is something they
say they are unlikely to ever give up.
But the initiation to it is exacting. Though you don’t have to commute,
as Gemma discovered, just walking down the hall to the office can be a
trial, especially when there’s no work to do. Often, he questioned
himself. The urge to quit persisted. To survive it, he put up a sign
that still hangs in his office today. It reads: “Nothing in the world
can take the place of persistence.”
Eventually, persistence paid off. Nibbles of business came in. From that
point Gemma built on his base. Soon, it was so large he decided to move
the business – with its ‘1-800’ business line – to his hometown of East
Greenwich, R.I. His wife Julie, a former Armonk, N.Y. school teacher,
became president. Today, Gem employs five full-time employees. Its more
than 750 clients include General Mills, Stanley-Bostitch, and Fender
Guitars.
“The customers weren’t returning my calls…weren’t responding to anything I was sending out. You look at (us) now and we’re successful and we’ve got everything we ever wanted, but in those days, you got nothing.”-Michael GemmaGem Barcoding Law
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“I don’t even handle day to day sales anymore,” Gemma said. “When this
started I controlled it – now it controls me and I try to (manage) it.”
The same fire that drives the Gemmas burns in another home-based
businessman: Warwick’s Timothy Reinke, owner of Thunder Promotions Inc.
His intensity is palpable. Sporting wire-rimmed glasses and a crew-cut,
he speaks excitedly about a business that he has grown over the past
three years, and one that is about to hit its three-year goals. A red
thunder bolt, the company logo, streaks from the left corner of his
white button-down shirt. In the shirt pocket below it is a pen with the
thunder bolt on the cap.
Reinke and his wife Kate help companies design promotional materials and
order promotional products through their online catalog. Among their
customers is Habitat for Humanity, which will soon begin selling a
Habitat for Humanity pin that Tim designed.
Like the Gemmas, Reinke said he will expand. Unlike them, however,
Reinke said he has no plans to be anything other than a home-based
business. He expects to renovate a barn in a semi-rural setting that
will allow them the space needed to do their most creative work. The
home will be connected to the barn, he said.
That expansion, which Reinke said will occur in four to six months, is
his dream. But part of that ideal is creating a greater separation of
home and the work space. A door will separate the two, he said.
Gemma said he realized the importance of that separation when his
business began interfering with family life.
“It took over my house,” Gemma said. “Everybody felt it.”
For Gemma, the compromise was to move the business out of the home and
into a place with all the comforts of one. The building is a renovated
house, and his office has a television, microwave, and a wet bar. A full
bathroom is down the hall.
Asked what advice he has for those thinking about starting their own
home-based business, he said: “They’re crazy if they don’t do it.”
But not so fast, warns Mark S. Deion, a Warwick small business
consultant. Many people who start home-based businesses, he said, have
lost their other jobs, and think their one skill set can be parlayed
into a successful business. Often, he said, they are unprepared for the
barrage of work that owning a business entails, from paperwork to
keeping up with state and federal regulations.
“The discovery of these ‘other’ things you need to do is a surprise in
itself,” Deion said, adding that it’s common for people to attempt to
run a home business and then give up. “Not everyone is made to be an
entrepreneur.”
He also advises against cutting corners. “The most disconcerting thing
for a potential customer is to have a two-year-old answer the phone,” he
said.
But some factors work in the home-based business person’s favor. About
three of every four home-based business are still operating after five
years, said Paul Edwards, who writes a nationally syndicated column
about working at home with his wife Sarah. Low overhead cost and the
enjoyment people derive from working at home are two reasons for this,
he said.
But he added that several factors will mitigate future home-business
growth. One is that Generation Xers are forming businesses at a slower
rate than their parents did. On the other side, however, the baby boom
generation is expected to work well past the age of retirement, which
could spur further growth.
One factor slowing growth now is the strong economy. The temptation to
stick with a steady paycheck is strong, Edwards said.
“It’s the best time to form a business,” he said. “But nevertheless a
lot of people don’t.”
Still, for those who can manage the risk, the rewards are high. Asked if
he would consider working for someone else again, Reinke is resolute.
“It will never happen,” he replied. “I could not (give up) one iota of
my freedom for the safety – if you can call it safety – of working for
someone else.”
