Several years ago, Cindy Lowry returned from a trade show with $500,000 in orders for her company and no credit line to fulfill them.
The president and CEO of Blossom Bucket Inc., a designer and wholesale distributor of home décor, took the orders to the bank and
asked for money, only to be shot down. But Lowry was not discouraged.
“I’m completely passionate about what I do, so it doesn’t really seem like work,” she says. “A lot of people give up too soon. Live through
that difficult time and be creative on how to overcome your obstacles.”
Today, Lowry’s North Lawrence-based business employs 30 and has grown sales to more than $5 million in 2006, a nearly 35 percent
increase from 2004.
Smart Business spoke with Lowry about how she used passion and plastic to grow her business.
Q: What does it take to grow a successful company?
One of our major challenges has always been financing. We just started thinking, ‘How can we get enough money to order what we
need?’ I went with the most common but unethical approach — I financed the entire thing on credit cards.
Think of how you’re going to handle your needs. Sometimes you just have to be really creative on how you’re going to go about doing
it.
Q: How did credit card debt affect your company?
I had so many credit cards, it hurt my personal credit for a couple years, but it really wasn’t a big deal. It worked for us, and I
didn’t have a problem with it. Within a couple years, we did have the capital. Then we went to the bank, and they were all happy
to give us the money.
All of the textbooks say, ‘Don’t ever do that. There are better ways of financing.’ In my case, I couldn’t come up with a better
one, short of financing my house, and I just wasn’t going to do that.
If you can’t overcome your debt, that’s what’s going to put you under. (Business owners need) to have the capitalization to buy
and do what they need to exist. We’ve overcome it now. Our bank works with us very well. Once you’ve proven yourself to the
bank, they’re pretty happy to work with you.
Q: How did you prove yourself?
We did that credit card deal, and at the end of the year, we turned a really good profit. I was doing all the bookkeeping for a
while — and I don’t have an accounting degree — so I hired a controller, who was able to turn our books into a much more attractive set of books for the bank to look at. That really was a big turnaround for us.
The financial person is definitely the person you want to hire first. That will help you move forward because then you look like a package,
a company that has credibility.
Q: What is the hardest part about leading a growing company?
The most difficult part is being the forerunner to keep everybody on track. You can’t do everything, but you can lead your people for
the common goal.
If you treat your people well, and they feel like you really do have their best interests in mind, the company is going to grow. We’ve experienced a lot of growing pains, but if I can be there to try to give my employees the insight that we just have to make it over the next hump
— I call it climbing mountains — we’ll stabilize for a while, and then we’ll look at the next goal to reach.
Q: How do you communicate that goal to your employees?
Our top management meets every Tuesday, and we go over the goal. We work on a goal for six months. When you get going in too many
directions, things start falling apart because you’re not able to focus all of your energy toward one common goal.
We’ve had the chaos, where there’s just too many things going on and we’ve taken on too much. Then, you’re not doing justice to yourself or your customers, and you just start floundering. We feel it’s better to focus on one thing at a time.
Q: How can business owners recognize impending chaos?
When your stress level is unbelievable and when you’ve gotten to the point where you just don’t know which way to turn, when your
team feels like things are not going to work, that’s the clue that you’ve got too much going on. You need to sit back and regroup.
Sometimes, we just call a halt (to a business proposal) and say, ‘I’m sorry, we just can’t do that this year,’ and honestly, the customer
ends up appreciating that because they know, in the end, they’re going to get what they need if we’re better organized and able to handle it.
HOW TO REACH: Blossom Bucket Inc., (330) 834-2551 or www.blossombucket.com
