Barbara Cosgrove
Founder, Barbara Cosgrove Lamps
www.barbaracosgrovelamps.com
Ladies Who Launch co-founders Victoria Colligan and Beth Schoenfeldt were thrilled to appear with Barbara at the 2007 Country Living Women Entrepreneurs Event in Chicago on March 10th. Barbara was featured in the March 2007 issue of Country Living.
Take two secs right now, and look around your home or office. How happy are you with the lighting? Does it set the right mood? Does it make the right statement?
Next, check out the luxury lamps created by Barbara Cosgrove (www.barbaracosgrovelamps.com) and you might be inspired to replace any hardware store specials hanging out on your side tables with something a bit more… statuesque, modern, elegant, sassy or just more you.
Drawing on her masters’ degrees in sculpture and spatial arts from San Jose State, and looking to re-enter the workforce after raising her family near Kansas City, Missouri, Barbara started her first business as she approached 50, showing that mid-life is by no means too late to launch.
Today Barbara Cosgrove Lamps sells to approximately 2000 retail boutiques and 1000 designers. Neiman-Marcus regularly features Barbara’s designs in its catalogs. Some of Barbara’s lamps even co-starred on season three of The Apprentice.
Lonely and Looking for Work
“I’ve been an artist all my life and I don’t think people realize that being an artist is really lonely. You go into the studio, work by yourself and go home in the evening. I had my family, but being a studio artist I didn’t have a lot of people around me at work. No one says you’re going to paint blue today or work in small scale today - you naturally have to be self-motivated and directed.
“Once my kids were raised… it’s a really tough time to start looking for a job when you’re almost 50. I think I suspected I was more marketable than an employer would perceive me as being..”
Combining Artistry with Electricity
“I went to the Atlanta International Gift and Home Furnishings Market with a friend and realized… there are all these people here, and they’re ready to buy. There’s a built-in market for lamps. If something was $100 or less, there was no hesitation. If it was more than $100, they would have to start to think about it. I thought… lamps are like sculptures, I’ll just keep changing them.
“I had a background in ceramics. I thought, ‘I know all these people who deal in clay.’ I thought I would get them to make clay bodies. As it turned out, none of the clay lamps sold, but the other stuff sold like mad. You have these plans and they work out, but not the way you think they will.”
Early Sales Calls - Ugh!
“When we were starting out in the garage of my home, I put some lamps in my car and went to those retailers I could work up the nerve to call on, which for me is a big deal because I don’t sell well at all. Now I don’t have anything to do with sales.
“We’ve gone from three to five local accounts to 3000 to 5000 accounts. We have about seven full-time people, and a couple part-time, as well as a huge sales force around the country.”
Secret to Success
“I think there’s only one and that’s tenacity. You just keep after it. You say, ‘Well, that didn’t work. I have to have another idea.’ Or, ‘That did work. Let’s build on that.’ You back up and you move forward. You back up and you move forward. You just keep trying.”
Greatest Challenges - Not Sleeping, Never Finishing
“I don’t sleep. Well, I sleep better now, but… the typical business problems… since I don’t come from a business world, I come from the arts, (problems) would keep me up nights trying to figure out what to do and what not to do. Whether to rent or not to rent. Whether to import from China or India. A million little decisions that seemed incredibly important at the time and maybe they were.
“Also, in the arts, there’s a sense of completion. and in business it’s never completed. It’ never solved.It’ always something. I think that was what was hardest for me to come to terms with. There would always be something. Someone who was selling well and someone who wasn’t. Letting go of the idea that the painting was going to be done… it was never going to be done.”
Advantages of Launching in Mid-Life
“I was 47 when I started my business. Though I hadn’t started a business before, I had sat at the dinner table with other people who had. When I approached a banker, I already knew them and knew they specialized in entrepreneurship. They even gave a class that was every Thursday for three months and they made you learn to read a financial statement and went through all this stuff for their business customers.
“I had a fabulous lawyer.I had all these great professionals that came with my age, not my experience… the experience of all the people around me - friends, neighbors, dinner partners. You learn a lot of stuff just by listening. I thought I wanted to do a partnership, but then I had heard so many partnerships go south. You just kind of absorb their experiences to get a world of experience that you don’t have.”
Greatest Entrepreneurial Influence
“My husband without a doubt. He had a huge sewer construction company and that’s lots of people and lots of unions… he had to deal with banks and accountants. He’s my main advisor and supporter. His company was multiple times the size of mine. It’s one thing to read a book, but it’s another to have someone help you with all the daily things… to have someone right there every night at the dinner table who’s been through it.”
Best Practice - Definitely
“I probably over research everything - I never went to a trade show that I didn’t go to the market (to test the market via customer research) at least once first. I never hired a sales rep that I didn’t meet and talk to several times. I never bought from a factory that I wasn’t familiar with.”
Best Practices - Maybe
“We move into things slowly. I don’t know whether that’s been a good decision or a bad decision. I’ve probably gone overboard not to do things that other people were doing and have probably paid the price for it financially. There was a time when beads and feathers were big on lamps. I hated it. I probably could have sold a lot of them, but I just couldn’t do it.”
Lessons Learned
“Someone once said, ‘If you think you have had a totally original idea, you just haven’t researched it enough.’ In lamps, there are no new shapes or new finishes or new colors - it’s all been done before. I dropped a lot of styles early on that looked like maybe someone else’s designs, but maybe I shouldn’t have.
“I have found my competitors are some of my best advisors, strangely enough. I have gotten to be friends with most of them over the years. We talk about what works and what doesn’t work. If I had known that right off the bat, it would have been easier or more fun.”
Words of Advice
“Universally I think anyone in the business would say the Number One thing is to hire the best people you can. If they’re not the right people, move on because you’re cheating them. They need to find something they’re good at. Every successful entrepreneur I have talked to has said, ‘If it weren’t for Bill or Joe or Sally or Sue, I wouldn’t be where I am today.’”
Favorite Quote of the Moment
“A man who tests the water with both feet is a fool.” - African proverb
Source of Inspiration
“We have a house about an hour’s drive from here - a beautiful house on a private lake. My kids and grandkids are there every weekend. My husband sails. Being there… that is totally putting the business away.”
