SmallBizResource Blog -- Women in Business

TwiddleMuff Maker Margaret Light: Wednesday's Woman

Posted by Gayle Kesten Wednesday, Jun 17, 2009, 12:05 PM ET

Not everybody is fortunate enough to know their grandparents. Margaret Light was, and not only did they provide her with a sense of stability while she was growing up -- her family moved every few years -- but one also served as the catalyst for a business that's now in its third year.

"Growing up, people said I looked a lot like my Grandma Lily," said the Canadian-born Light, who has three grown sons and lives in Chicago with her husband. "She was born in 1906 and lived to be 93. When she was 90 she was blind and not able to get around much. It was 1996, and I was living in England at the time. [She was in Canada], and we'd talk on the phone. She'd say her hands were cold, that there was nothing she could do. That year I wanted to give her something for Christmas that would be better than a pair of slippers."

(l-r) BeauLilly's K'Lynne Johnson, Margaret Light, and Heather Tonk

Light, who had worked for many years in human resources for British oil company BP, began thinking about something Grandma Lily could hold onto while she was listening to the TV or radio. Something that would give her hands something to do. Something she could absentmindedly twiddle with. "I came up with this muff idea," she said. "A lot of older women as kids wore a muff with their Sunday coat instead of gloves or mittens. So it was a familiar object."

Light wrapped a purple velvet scarf around batting, bought various attachments and gadgets, such as beads and squeezy balls -- "The action of squeezing increases blood circulation, which also helps with warmth and strength," she explained -- and sewed them all together. She described the process as a labor of love, but what Light didn't realize at the time was she was also sowing the seeds for a product called the "TwiddleMuff," and a small business called BeauLily.

BeauLily is among the winners of StartupNation's Leading Moms in Business contest. The folks behind the competition reached out to me with many compelling stories about the businesses that are in the running; I chose three to profile, including BeauLily, and I'll be writing about the other two in the coming weeks.

In this interview, the often humorous Light shares why a cash infusion had nothing to do with her decision to bring in business partners, her plans for outsourcing, and why her product was kicked off of Facebook's Marketplace.

SBR: I take it your grandmother liked her gift?
Light: I wasn't there when she opened it, but my family members were, and my sister-in-law, who is an OT [occupational therapist], thought it was a great idea. According to my mother, my grandmother had it on her lap every day until she passed away Jan. 1, 2000. We joke that she wasn't Y2K-compliant.

SBR: Growing up, how were you influenced by your own grandparents?
Light: We never lived really close to them, but I was the kid in the family who'd go off and stay with them for a week in the summer. I really enjoyed spending time with them. It was kind of my happy place because we moved around a lot. My dad was in a job that required us to move about every five years, so my grandparents offered some stability. They lived in the same house -- a nice consistency and comfort for a kid on the move.

The elderly has always been more of my thing; premarriage, I volunteered at a local assisted living home and was then offered a paid job as a care officer -- they're like activity directors -- in a nursing home. The elderly have lived such full, interesting lives, and they tend to have a sense of humor. I don't want to generalize, but most are more interesting than kids who are at the early stages of life and are pretty self-focused.

SBR: Six years passed from the time you gave your grandmother her present and before you did anything more with it. What were you up to?
Light: I was working full time and not looking to start a business. We had moved to Chicago in 2000 when my husband took a job at Northwestern. [I was able to take my BP job with me], but in 2006 the opportunity came to leave BP or I would have had to take a job back in England. At that point I thought, "Now what options do I have to keep me busy for the next few years? I signed up for some volunteer work, I thought I'd do some HR consulting, and I also thought maybe now is a good time to see where I could take the TwiddleMuff.

SBR: What steps did you take?
Light: I'm a social person, so the first thing I did was invite two ex-colleagues from BP to be partners -- women I had enjoyed working with and who lived by me. I liked the idea of not working in isolation. In talking to other small business owners, this makes me a little bit unique: I didn't really need the money; I needed their camaraderie. I didn't want to share the disappointments and successes all on my own.

SBR: Who does what?
Light: I'm now running the company full time. The other two are small equity holders. I involve them usually once a week with questions and issues. When we first started, Heather Tonk was more around the marketing. K'Lynne Johnson was more around the administrative setup, making sure we had our tax licenses, our patents, and doing the stuff I don't like doing -- which is another big bonus to having a partner. She was also our Web site designer, though that's moved over to Heather now. I was everything else -- the prototype person, manufacturing, operations, etc.

SBR: What was involved in manufacturing the TwiddleMuffs?
Light: I found people in my area that would take on sewing projects. I told them what I wanted and bought the fabric, and they put the prototypes together. After four or five prototypes, we got two or three models that we were happy with. Then I took it to contract sewers because we weren't in any position to go big volume or to ship in from China.

SBR: How were you financing all of this?
Light: We put in our own money -- $35,000 so far between the three of us. We weren't interested in taking out loans and having debt. We planned to grow slowly and more organically, which seems to keep things more manageable than taking out a $100,000 loan and having to pay it back. So I looked in the telephone book and found two other people having similar products made, and then found three contract sewers in our area. I talked to all three and arrived at two I thought I'd like to work with. I took in fabric samples and designs to them both, and asked them to make five of each of our prototype. I was looking for consistency in the end product and quality sewing, and then they were going to give me a price. One came out as the clear winner, a fellow who runs a team of sewers in Chicago. They've been doing most of our sewing for the past couple of years.

SBR: Have you ever considered outsourcing overseas? Light: I recently took the product over to China and am working with a third party who has manufacturing facilities there. We have five versions of the TwiddleMuff -- two different colored cats, a puppy, a plaid design for men, and a purple one for women. I took the three animals overseas because they were quite expensive, with embroidered faces, tails, and so on, so it was hard to create much of a margin working with our local contractor. The third party came in at a very good price, and we didn't have to deal with the whole customs import business ourselves. We knew we'd pay a premium by working through a third party, but it also helps with the anxiety levels. We'll be taking the final two out to make prototypes in China in the next few months.

SBR: What do you find to be the hardest part about running a business?
Light: Keeping the demand coming in -- keeping in front of the public and getting the word out without spending hundreds of thousands in advertising.

SBR: So how do you market yourself?
Light: Mostly we are spread by word of mouth. Our product gets bought by someone in a nursing home, and then other people see it.We put on our Website on the label, so relatives who are interested can order it.

I also send a lot of email to geriatric care consultants. It's basically me looking at Web sites to see if they'd be interested. Rather than paying the big companies for lists that promise to do this all for you, we've tried to do a lot of it ourselves. We also do postcard mailouts using VistaPrint. They cost next to nothing. I get 1,000 postcards for $70, plus stamps are 28 cents, so you're contacting someone for about 35 cents.

SBR: How about the social networks?
Light: This is a funny story: A few years ago I took out a Facebook page because it has a marketplace. I advertising the TwiddleMuff, and it was removed about four or five days later, the reason being it was viewed as pornographic material.

SBR: Where do most of your sales come from?
Light: Most of our orders -- 75% in a given year -- go through catalogs. The remainder is online. In all, we told 1,000 TwiddleMuffs in 2008. Our revenue is doubling every year. Since we started the business in 2006, we've grossed over $100,000. Of course, we're reinvesting all of our profits back into the business.

SBR: Where do you house your products?
Light: I have a three-car garage and only two cars. I also have a finished basement. Our three kids have left home now, so we have the space.

SBR: How many hours do you work each day?
Light:A typical day is about seven hours. I try not to work on the weekend, but I will if it's necessary. I try to take every Thursday afternoon off. It's easy to fill every moment -- it's a whole mental shift that has to take place to convince yourself you're not cheating the boss.

SBR: How do you spend your workday?
Light: There's still a big manual element to the business. I can't just grab the TwiddleMuffs off of the shelves [and mail them]. Our manufacturer just makes the bodies. I make and attach the gadgets, put the tags on, and put them into sealed bags. I enjoy spending the time making sure everything looks nice.

SBR: Why not have your manufacturer put together the entire product?
Light: In the early stages we were saving money by doing so. We're moving to work with [the manufacturer in China] to make and attach the gadgets, and bag them up, but we're probably still four to six months off from that happening.

SBR: In addition to outsourcing, what else do you have planned this year?
Light: Our site is just a Yahoo Store -- just a fairly basic template. That's one place where we might put some more of our funding, to improve our Web site and take it to higher level. It works, but it looks basic. There's nothing really pretty or special about it.

SBR: Has the recession impacted your business?
Light: It's hard to know. We weren't in full swing for years before the recession, so we have no means of comparing. Our sales have continued to grow, outperforming every previous month last year already.

SBR: What kind of technology do you most rely on?
Light: Well, I have my laptop. I haven't gone Blackberry. I have a business toll-free number -- not really high technology -- and an all-in-one fax/scanner/printer. Now that my three tech advisers have all left home, I don't want to get something I can't work myself.

SBR: How do you stay motivated?
Light: Sometimes there are a few days that nobody buys. Motivation drops, but then I have to remind myself that it's a chance to get caught up, because that big order may be right around the corner, and I should see this as a bit of breathing space. We have a little joke in my family. My husband will come home as ask, "How was it today?" I'll say, "Well, I sold one two days ago. It may be the last one I ever sell." Then sure enough the next morning a big order comes in.

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