Dick Youngblood: It took only a moment to be seized by entrepreneurial inspiration

I'm often amused -- not to mention bemused -- by the random nature of the entrepreneurial impulse.

Take Jennifer Meyer Redman: Her sister was getting married in 1995 and couldn't find a headpiece she liked. So Redman, who had studied art at the College of St. Benedict, designed one for her.

That encouraged Redman to begin making headpieces and veils for friends. Before you could say "I do," she was in partnership with St. Benedict classmate Jenn Bresee in a St. Paul company called Che Bella (Italian for "how beautiful"), an award-winning designer of custom-made bridal veils, tiaras and other wedding accessories.

Or consider Mary Leonard, a telecommunications sales and marketing manager with a truly laudable hobby: She enjoyed making truffles, those chocolate-over-chocolate concoctions the mere sight of which can make my arteries slam shut.

In a restaurant with a friend one day in 2001, she offered one of her creations to the owner, who asked: "Do you sell these?"

Leonard pondered the question for a split second, considered her reluctance to continue working for wages, and replied, "Why yes, I do." A week later she registered her business with the secretary of state and Chocolat Céleste (French for "Heavenly Chocolate") was born in St. Paul.

(We will examine the entrepreneurial penchant for kitschy foreign appellations at a later date.)

'Tiffany's of chocolate'

Let's start today's saga with Leonard, 48, who was coming off a lengthy sabbatical when she started her venture.

"My parents died young, so I decided I wanted to live life a little," she said. In 1998, she quit her job as a marketing manager at MCI Telecommunications, cashed in her MCI stock options and plowed the money into the stock market. The ensuing dividends, plus a bit of day trading, allowed her to spend two years at such worthy endeavors as biking through France and taking golf lessons.

Back in the workaday world, Leonard enrolled in a course on starting your own company, took out a $50,000 home-equity loan to buy equipment and opened for business last December. Her objective was to become "the Tiffany's of gourmet chocolate, not just another ma-and-pa candy store."

So she imported ingredients from Europe and South America, wrapped her wares in distinctive, ribbon-bound black boxes and attached some Tiffany-like prices: from $14.95 for the Petit Assortment of four truffles to $49.95 for the Grand Assortment of 16 to $93.95 for the Chocolatier's Choice of 29.

Then she joined several chambers of commerce and zeroed in on sales executives, marketing her truffles as ideal gifts for important clients. Within months she had a roster of stock brokers, Realtors and executive search firms coming back for more. She also has a dozen customers enrolled in her Truffles of the Month Club, which offers members four truffles and a change of flavor each month for $177 a year.

Add a five-figure gross from her Web site (http://www.chocolatceleste.com) and you get a business that generated $120,000 of revenue in the first 11 months of 2002 -- with Leonard projecting that Christmas sales could fatten that total significantly. Indeed, by Dec. 1 she had $50,000 worth of product on order for Christmas.

Fortuitous journey

For Redman, 32, and Bresee, 29, the road to success was routed through India, where they traveled in 2000 to finalize arrangements for a New Delhi company to hand-embroider their veil, shawl and handbag designs.

The trip, for which the partners borrowed $5,000, wasn't made just to sign contracts, Bresee said: "We also wanted to make sure their working conditions were OK." Whatever the reason, the journey helped make 2000 a breakout year for the company, which had been a part-time enterprise until 1999.

"A lot of other designers don't have hand-embroidered veils," Redman said. "So we created a lot of interest when we attended the fall [2000] Bridal Market Week," a semiannual industry show held in New York City. The trip was a shoestring affair, however, with the partners sleeping on the floor of their hotel showroom to save money.

It was worth the sacrifice: Their designs generated enough interest that Redman and Bresee ended the year with agreements from 19 large boutiques across the country to carry Che Bella designs.

Sales in 2000 climbed 42 percent to $111,000 from $78,000 the year before, and the growth rate accelerated in 2001, when revenue topped $180,000. Che Bella designs tiaras and headpieces that cost $100 to $500, veils that sell for $75 to $750 and jewelry that goes for $75 to $200.

Despite last year's 65 percent sales jump, however, the partners were disappointed. The reason: Several weeks before the fall 2001 Bridal Market Week, they were informed that Che Bella had been named the show's new designer of the year in the accessories category, an honor that promised lucrative attention in the fourth quarter of 2001 and beyond.

But then came the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which slashed attendance at the show and slapped a damper on the economic recovery. Instead of the sharp sales increase they envisioned for 2002, Redman and Bresee had to scramble to match the 2001 gross.

Nevertheless, prospects have brightened in recent months, a fact best illustrated by their decision to splurge on a separate $600-a-night room at the fall 2002 Bridal Week show.

"I felt like a princess," Bresee said.

They more than covered that cost by adding 15 salons to their client list during the show, bringing their total to 45 boutiques. And in November, they secured a $50,000 SBA loan to start their own women's and girls' gift shop in a new retail and residential development in St. Louis Park.

The Che Bella Gift & Bridal Boutique, scheduled to open in February, will carry their bridal designs, plus a variety of gifts for other special occasions such as proms, birthdays, Mother's Day and bat mitzvahs.

Dick Youngblood can be reached at 612-673-4439 or at yblood@startribune.com.