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Risky Business

Young Lawrence business owners ante up for a shot at a self-employed future

By Richard Gintowt (Contact)

Monday, November 28, 2005

Christine Kosirog had perfected the art of talking herself out of her dreams.

The 27-year-old mother of two was on the verge of going back to school for a masters degree in English. A week before classes started, however, she couldn't stop talking about the flower shop she'd always wanted to open.

Thankfully, her husband forced her to listen.

"He was finally like, 'I don't understand why you're so afraid to take out a business loan to start the shop, yet you're willing to take out student loans to pay for a degree in English when that's not any safer,'" Kosirog says. "I couldn't argue with that."

A year later, Kosirog is open for business. Her flower boutique, The Painted Lady, occupies a nook in the bustling downtown, and her days are spent ordering flowers, fixing cash registers and greeting shoppers.

Soon, she hopes to set to rest the question that's been nagging her for the past year: Does no store like hers exist because there's no niche? Or is there no niche because no store exists?

"I went into it ignorantly, which I think is good," she says. "If I had known then what I know now, I probably would have talked myself out of it."

Business in bloom

Such leaps of faith are simply part of the investment - emotionally and financially - that goes along with being a young entrepreneur.

Cities like Lawrence, after all, aren't built entirely by dollar-bleeding sugar daddies with multiple investment portfolios. Mass. St.'s charm has always lurked in the behind-the-storefront stories, the rookie entrepreneurs who dared to throw their still-simmering recipes into the mix.

The Painted Lady, for example, isn't just a flower shop. It's a fresh flower shop that scatters its inventory across the showroom floor in big metal buckets, intermingled with candles, vases and wares from local artists.

"It's kind of like going to the Farmers Market to buy flowers, but I'm indoors and I'll be open year-round," Kosirog explains. "I'm kind of fearful that people are going to want me to be a florist - like, they'll have a hard time understanding that I'm not."

Rather, Kosirog is fashioning a haven for flower-lovers who may not necessarily flock to traditional florist refrigerators. She won't be doing funerals and she won't be doing weddings.

"There are a lot of good florists in this town who have a lot more experience than I do," she says. "That's something I can't compete with ... at least not yet."

As she weathers her first month of business, Kosirog is thinking about much more than flowers. Her store's survival relies largely on good marketing and bookkeeping. With the arrival of a number of nearby chain stores, the latter figures to be a constant concern.

"My fear is that the local business owners aren't going to be able to keep up with the price of rent," she says. "I think there can be a happy medium between local and corporate stores, but the prices I was looking at to be on Mass. St. were outrageous. My guess is that as more corporate stores come in they're just going to keep going up."

Such factors may intensify the pressure, but Kosirog is doing her best to focus on the task at hand. One way or another, she has to repay those loans - and she'd much rather do it by staying in business.

"They always say that when you start a business you learn things about yourself that you never knew, and that's absolutely true," she says. "I tend to be really controlling and a perfectionist. Some of that is good, but sometimes you just have to be fearless."

Good taste

Such fearlessness is a prerequisite in the restaurant industry, where establishments often come and go like tent revivals.

Rick Seifert is no stranger to the itinerant lifestyle of professional chefs. Since his humble beginnings as a Dairy Queen fry-cook, Siefert has worked at more Lawrence restaurants than most local eaters can patronize in a month. His 14-year resume includes: Henry T's, 75th St. Brewery, Zen Zero, Teller's, Wheatfields, JB Stout's, Set'em Up Jacks and Mad Hatter Bar & Gril (recently scaled back to just a bar).

Last month, Seifert opened Mirth, a fine-dining café located in the former Café Nova space at 8th and New Hampshire St. The venture allowed him to realize his dream of creating his own menu instead of cooking someone else's.

"You're held back by the realms of what other people want, their vision for their own restaurant," says the 29-year-old chef. "If you want to run a roasted duck special they're like, 'No, dude. We flip hamburgers here.' You're like, 'But roasted duck is really good. People will buy it' and they're like, 'Make some enchiladas. Those are really good. Those sell.'"

To gain enough confidence to open a restaurant in Lawrence, however, Seifert had to leave the city behind.

"I just knew that Kansas was not the place where I was going to learn all the things I needed to learn to get myself in a position to compete," he says. "Every restaurant I worked at, I kept seeing the same things."

So Seifert swore he would never cook another burger in Lawrence and jetted off to California. There, he found work at two upscale establishments that taught him how to fuse elements of French, Italian and Japanese cooking. As he gained confidence in his abilities, however, Seifert realized that California wasn't the place to start his own business.

"Nobody was willing to invest heavily in me," he says. "And, to be quite frank, the competition is less here for the kind of food I want to do."

A couple years after returning to Lawrence, Siefert found a kindred spirit in Robert Wilson - the boss of the company he was doing construction work for. After sampling Siefert's cooking at a company party, Wilson offered to finance Siefert's first venture.

"We had a lot of heart-to-hearts about whether or not this was a good time to be putting a lot of money into something," Siefert says, referring to current economic factors like the ongoing war and recent natural disasters. "But it seems to me that it's not about the money ... for us it's been about the fact that people are happy to have another breakfast place downtown."

Before executing his redesign of the Café Nova space, Siefert spent a couple weeks behind the counter getting to know the regulars. He sought input about the menu and the atmosphere before unveiling his concept. Once he reopened as Mirth, he didn't do any advertising.

"I'd like to be laid back and get it rolling nice and smooth, because I know that as much as I've planned it out, there's going to be some kinks," he says. "My friends at Local Burger seemed like they had a lot of advertising and they just got hit really hard. They pulled it off, but it seemed like it would be a lot of pressure to just open your doors and - boom - you got all this weight on you."

So far, Mirth has provided its owner with plenty of, well, mirth. The first month's growth far exceeded expectations, he says. Still, there are plenty of lessons yet to be learned.

"Hopefully people give me honest feedback and they're not just telling me nice things because they know that I'm the chef and the owner," he says. "They're not going to hurt my feelings. I have pretty thick skin."

Doggone debt

While the downtown area may be the first location that young entrepreneurs consider, West Lawrence is quickly becoming an equally enticing option.

Sisters Amber and Nicki Nickel recently opened Pawsh Wash in the Wakarusa Marketplace (15th and Wakarusa St.) after considering a number of spaces downtown.

"In every area of town you can argue the pros and cons," Amber says. "Rent is really high out here and you don't really have a lot of traffic at this point. But I think we made the right choice because I think the majority of our customers are in this area."

The venture marked an abrupt career change for both sisters. Nicki, 33, had worked as a nurse for a decade, while Amber, 27, spent time as professional ski bum before graduating with a journalism degree in 2002. Though she worked part-time as a TV production assistant, Amber still depended on bartending to pay the bills.

"The older I got, the younger they got," she says. "It was just like, 'OK. I'm beat, I'm tired - I want to try something else.'"

Conveniently, Nicki had a plan.

"I was literally driving to Kansas City to wash my dog because it was easier to drive an hour there and an hour back than it was to clean my tub, clean my bathroom and clean my entire house after he shook through it," she says. "I just felt like this was a niche that Lawrence hadn't tapped into yet."

Both sisters credit their father (a silent partner in the store) with pushing them to go into business for themselves. He also convinced them to expand their services to include all-natural pet food and treats as well as plenty of doggie toys.

"My dad always said, 'Anything you can do for somebody else you can do for yourself,'" Amber says. "I just wanted to take a whack at it and see if we got what it takes."

So far, the sisters have learned the hard way. They didn't realize that it takes a month to get a building permit from the city, so the first month's rent went for naught. When they finally opened, they forgot to put change in the cash drawer.

"I took two twenties and ran to the bank across the street," Amber recalls. "Luckily it was friend of mine so he just sat there and laughed at us."

At this point, the business-loan debt is nothing to be concerned about, Amber says. She views it the same way as a college education: you have spend a lot to earn a lot.

This investment, however, might actually turn into a full-time job.

"Worst case scenario: Nicki goes back to being a nurse and I go back to bartending at four or five different places," Amber says. "And that wasn't so bad."

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