The Business: Sierra Stamps, a retail operation that sells a wide range of rubber stamp products and teaches consumers how to use them to make greeting cards, artwork and a variety of other decorations. The business is in the Smithridge Center at 5000 Smithridge Drive in Reno.
The Players: Sierra Stamps is operated by partners Laura Pappas, Sharon Evans and Sue Brimhall. Pappas and Evans founded the business in 1991. Brimhall joined the operation four years later and became a partner in January 1999.
The Background: Ten years ago, Pappas and Evans were looking for a way to supplement their income with a job they really enjoyed. They decided to turn their hobby of rubber-stamping into a business. Evans, a store clerk and single mother, particularly needed additional income. Pappas, a parole officer with a husband and small daughter, also wanted to augment her salary. The two started with a home-based business. The headquarters for the business switched back and forth between their homes. They demonstrated their products and skills at local craft fairs and other events, and developed a following.
The Challenge: Four years after starting Sierra Stamps, the women decided to transform it from a home-based operation to a retail business. This was a major step that meant they needed the money and expertise to compete in the business world. The two women combined had 20 years of retail experience, but believed they needed more knowledge to succeed. They lacked a game plan and the capital to make their dream a reality.
The Solution: Pappas took a business class from the Nevada Micro-Enterprise Initiative – a government program that assists business owners – and shared what she learned with her partner. The Micro-Enterprise Initiative recommend they seek advice from the Nevada Small Business Development Center. The center, based at the University of Nevada, Reno, provides a wide variety of business programs in cooperation with the U.S. Small Business Administration. It helped the partners formulate a business plan and gave them a good recommendation when they sought a bank loan. The class gave the partners the expertise to deal with taxes, legal paperwork, retail space negotiations and other aspects of business. In addition to the recommendation from the center, Evans said maintaining good personal credit also helped them obtain a loan from Bank of America for working capital.
In August 1995, they negotiated a lease at the Hillcrest Center and opened a 600-square-foot store in August 1995, but soon outgrew it and moved within the center to another store three times as large. Sierra Stamps thrived, and the women found that the classes they offered on creating greeting cards and imprinting designs and words on a variety of surfaces were very popular. Brimhall, who shared their passion for the craft and had been helping them for four years, was brought on as a full partner in August 1999.
The partners had not planned on a major expansion, but they began to run out of space for their classes. They recently moved into a 2,000-square-foot store in the Smithridge Center, which is located in a busier retail area. The store has potential for expansion, Evans said. Sierra Stamps is open six days a week from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Evans said one of the biggest challenges for the business has been scheduling, because the partners do not have employees. They have developed arrangements, sometimes worked around other part-time jobs, to make sure the store is always staffed. Their classes further complicate scheduling. To solve the problem, the women bring in experts on various aspects of stamping to help teach the classes.
One of the main reasons for the firm’s success has been planning. “We had goals for the business, we had statistics and we knew what we wanted to do,” Evans said of the initial blueprint she and Pappas developed for Sierra Stamps. Another key to success has been to constantly offer new products and classes. The store now designs and produces greeting cards for businesses that send out holiday and other special-occasion cards to customers and employees.
The uses for rubber-stamping are almost limitless, Evans said. Designs can be stamped on furniture and porcelain, and rubber-stamping can be used to create scrapbooks. The partners keep up with the latest in stamping technology by monitoring trade publications and trade shows. They network with craft stores whose customers might be interested in stamping. “We are pretty successful, but not on a grand scale financially,” Evans said. “We have made mistakes and learned from them. It has been a fun and creative experience.”