Well I got this call late Friday from a member of the local mothers’ club, requesting a article about motherhood and running your own business. Just one catch, had to be done by the next night! Yikes. So I managed to squeeze that in at the end of the day Saturday, and finish it a few minutes after midnight. Whew!
Captures a bit of my transition from engineer to green business owner, so thought I should share it here.
Birth of A “Mompreneur” By Kate Amon, Owner of Kate’s Caring Gifts
Flashback to 2001. More layoffs at Redback Networks a month after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. At this point my husband and I have two children: Sarah, an infant, and Joseph, a preschooler. I am not terribly upset about being laid off. After the craziness of joining a new engineering start-up company in 1997 (Fiberlane, which became Siara Systems, which merged with Redback Networks) *AND* getting pregnant in 1997 with Joseph, I was OK with shifting into the “slow lane” for awhile.
Backing up earlier: Since 1997 I’d had my share of the start-up excitement of working 10 hour days during pregnancy, working up to the day before giving birth to Joseph, and after slightly over 2 months maternity leave I was expressing milk 2 or 3 times a day in a bathroom shared by three small companies. A nice opportunity to be educational – once a woman asked, “Is that dialysis?”. I briefly explained. Who would have thought someone could confuse breast functions with kidney functions?? One night besides getting up to nurse Joseph I got a call from work – sometime between midnight and 3 AM, it’s a blurry memory – to remotely restart the license server, so other engineers “burning the midnight oil” could continue running software design tools used in chip development. So I did. The show must go on at a startup! I was the first and only maternity leave for Fiberlane Communications. Telecommuting once or twice a week helped. Still it was tiring to keep up. I was unashamed about dozing off during less important meetings.
Life was less frantic by 1999 after the company had grown and then merged with Redback Networks. For Sarah, I took a month off before birth in December 2000 and five months after. Just another five months back to work before being laid off!
I recall my last engineering experience as quite the crazy adventure, without any bitterness. I don’t think I could top it, so will call it my engineering finale. It was fascinating to see the growth of a company from almost the very beginning. I got to be involved in projects with effective smart team members and product real products. It never occurred to me before that I would leave engineering – I still proudly have a lifetime membership in the Society of Women Engineers.
So what was I now? At home mommy? Retired? Didn’t worry about it much. I focused on the home front, even finally had time to join a FUNMC [Fremont/Union City/Newark Mothers' Club] playgroup with Sarah. I could take a closer look at how I did mundane domestic tasks. I learned of a group called Co-op America, whose message that every dollar you spend is a vote for how you want things done. Like a dollar spent on organic produce is an act encouraging farming without harmful pesticides. How we could support a new “green” economy to replace the current “business-as-usual” practices so damaging to the planet and human well-being. What a nice alternative to the mindless consumerism typically promoted on TV and the media in general!
In 2003 my husband Lee, in his work as a marketing consultant, was working with a small manufacturer of some spa soap products. Lee advised him to also sell the soap online as well as wholesale, but he was not comfortable with the online world. So Lee asked if it was OK if we set up an online store. He was fine with it, so Lee asked me if I wanted to be the owner/president. Thought a soap shop run by a woman would look better. I was amused by this. Sell soap? Fancy soap? A tom-boy ex-engineer without the slightest interest in make-up or fashion? Well, OK. So in the summer of 2003 Gifts & Soaps By Kate was born. Inventory was in the garage – the best smelling garage in town! Lee once told a customer his order was packed and on the “shipping dock”. In other words, our washing machine. Cute! I would have Sarah and Joseph come with me after preschool to the main Fremont post office on Dusterberry to mail off packages. A photo of Sarah pushing a package into the package drop-off slot still graces our current website, www.KatesCaringGifts.com.
Despite Lee having the patience of a saint working with the soap maker, the guy turned out to be an unreliable supplier (and frankly, a head case – to put it mildly). I had already starting sourcing other products and was determined to go greener, to be a part of the growing green economy. So Lee and I closed down Gifts & Soaps by Kate, LLC – which has that soap maker as a partner, and in 2004 Kate’s Caring Gifts was born, a sole proprietorship. I added products I deemed worthy to be “People and Earth Friendly Gifts”. Kate’s Caring Gifts passed the screening to become a business member of Co-op America.
From 2004 to 2007 we shared as partners a small 1,000 square foot gift shop in Irvington we named “Great Gifts Galore” with a formerly home-based basket maker. Lee and I used the time to develop a website and expand product offerings to include candles and foods which I love, like CHOCOLATE. Organic and fair trade chocolate, of course. No pesticides, no slave labor! Unfortunately our Great Gifts Galore partners were unable to make the store work out financially for them, so we closed down the store and relocated Kate’s Caring Gifts to have its own new space in a Warm Springs warehouse.
Running a business is certainly easier now that Sarah and Joseph are now elementary school age. It’s strange to find myself in a second career I never anticipated, but proves the importance of lifelong learning and adapting! I’m glad Lee and I can show our children how a business can be a force for good. On my wall at work I proudly have a drawing Sarah made in Kindergarten where she and I are sitting at a table with products on it, and she’s written, “When I grow up I want to be a worker at Kate’s Caring Gifts”. Which if she does is fine. Or an engineer. Or which ever direction her heart leads her.
Sharing the recipe I used for last week’s school bake sale for Haiti. One of my son’s teachers let me know the proceeds went to “Terre des hommes”, an organization working with children in Haiti for 20 years. At this moment they are working with orphans and their needs. (Doctors Without Borders, one of Kate’s Caring Gifts designated charities, also is helping in Haiti.)
