cosvteorry
ANNE HAMERSKY
Julie Steele
was inspired to create her
No Squeeze™ Juice Box
Holder after suffering through
one too many juice-box
mishaps experienced by her
daughters. The nuts and bolts
of the business were a mystery
to her, but she persevered
through the worlds of patents,
attorneys and insurance, get-
ting help from other moms
and researching shopping
habits. “I camped out in stores,
studying consumer behavior,”
says Steele. “I immersed myself
in the market to see what was
drawing women to products
and why.”
Mom
ti’s the
A new genera on of stay-at-home moms
takes the entrepreneurial world by storm
A mom entrepreneur
is anyone who is able
to work from home
and make a living.
“
By T. Foster Jones
”
THESE DAYS, WHEN you hear a woman refer
fondly to her “baby,” she just might be talking about
her business.
–Kristie Tamsevicius
WebMomz
No longer content to let motherhood isolate
them from or hamper their ability to thrive in the
business community, entrepreneurial moms fill an
economic niche and have been gaining recognition
as a legitimate business force.
Mothers who have become at-home entrepreneurs—and the businesses and products they have
created run the gamut—are a phenomenon that has
emerged over the past decade as part of a larger
trend of female entrepreneurship. According to a
study by the nonprofit Center for Women’s Business
Research (CWBR), women are starting new businesses at twice the rate of men and own a 50 percent
word
or greater stake in 10. 6 million U.S. businesses.
“It definitely is a trend,” says Sharon Hadary, executive director of the CWBR, which released a study
showing that one-woman businesses, the category
that most new entrepreneurial moms fall into, have
been growing at twice the rate of the national average.
These are not just cute hobbies, either. Many
women-at-home businesses are making serious
cash, with annual sales in the $100,000 range, and
some in the millions.
The trend has become popular enough to spawn
its own subset of businesses and services. Organizations and Web sites have sprung up to serve the
women behind these enterprises. According to
authors Ellen Parlapiano and Patricia Cobe, who
trademarked the term “mompreneurs,” their Web
