Getting down to business

When Amanda Robinett first walked into the long-abandoned room at 122 N. Sprigg St. in Cape Girardeau, she saw Purple Spaghetti.

Instead of the drab beige paint that was chipping from the walls, she envisioned pink and purple. Her mind cleaned the filthy carpet littered with junk left from the previous tenant and on it laid out racks and cabinets full of novelties for sale. Most importantly, she saw herself behind the counter, at the register: Amanda Robinett, age 25, co-owner and operator of the Purple Spaghetti novelty shop.

For four years, Robinett and her 29-year-old boyfriend, Chris "Purple" Turner, had been dreaming about this moment, saving their own money to make it happen. They knew the wanted to go into business before they even knew what kind of business they wanted to go into. They were ready to make their own money and be their own bosses. Time will tell whether they were ready for the risk.

The U.S. Small Business Administration reports there are 22.9 million small-businesses in the country. It also reports that over 50 percent of small businesses fail in their first year, and 95 percent go under within their first five. Robinett knows this. But she believes in what she and Turner are doing. At the very least, she's hopeful.

"Hopefully, we'll make some money," she said.

"I just don't want to work for someone else, and I don't want to be dependent on someone else for my paycheck," Robinett said. "I want to know that the money we have is money we made. I always think in terms of green."

Robinett and Turner have been thinking in those terms realistically since Turner got a better paying job with Nestle/Purina Petcare Co. in February 2003. With his new income pooled with the money she makes as a paralegal, the two found they could circumnavigate the banks and fund the venture themselves. Years of idle talk suddenly became a realistic possibility.

A lingering possibility

For Brigette Bollerslev, the possibility of opening a Bavarian-style restaurant in the area was anything but new. Since she opened a public outlet store for her Old Bavarian Sausage distributorship in Jackson in November 2001, popular demand for her to take that next step and open a German eatery has been almost constant. But Bollerslev was reluctant to see if that demand would actually support and maintain a restaurant.

"I wasn't interested in taking the time to look for a location," she said.

Already juggling the distributorship and the outlet store, her time was at a premium. She knew too well the pressures of running a small business and was in no hurry to multiply that stress.

"You have to be open to some sleepless nights," Bollerslev warned. "You have to ride with the waves, up and sometimes way down."

But when friends Emad and Mimi Salamy decided to close their restaurant Phoenicia after 12 years in May, a restaurant building suddenly came up for rent. The opportunity was too good for Bollerslev to pass up.

"I thought to myself, 'Maybe this is what we should do. God has put this in our lap,'" Bollerslev said.

Today, Old Bavarian Dining is becoming a reality as she and her staff spend a good portion of their 12-hour days cleaning and prepping the new eatery at 1000 N. Sprigg St. But as with most things, Bollerslev is getting a little more than she expected.

The fire inspector required that she install new emergency lights and change the fire extinguisher. The health inspector mandated that she close some of the ductwork, get some new kitchen equipment and even replace the seal around the back door. A thousand things that even she, an experienced businesswoman, had never thought about.

However, she said the sleepless nights and the hours on the cell phone while running between businesses are worth it because she gets to use her talent to please people. She said the whole be-your-own-boss thing isn't all it's built up to be.

"We have to answer to our employees and most of all, to our customers," Bollerslev said. "Customers can be tougher than any employer."

Finding a home

Similar fortune in regards to finding a location smiled on Robinett and Turner at a time when it looked like their flying machine might never get off the ground.

At first, they had wanted to open a gaming store, but their research found that demand for such a place was a bit shaky in Cape Girardeau. Gradually the idea shifted to a Spencer's-like novelty shop located downtown for easy access to the college students, whom Robinett pegged as their niche customers. With the money in hand, they set out to look for a location. But they soon learned that finding an affordable location in downtown Cape Girardeau was a daunting task. After several unsuccessful tours of vacant downtown buildings, the outlook was bleak.

Save for a happy coincidence, their dream might have ended there. But when friends Fred and Donna Themm bought the building at 637 Broadway in Cape Girardeau in the early spring of 2004, they approached Robinett and Turner with a vacant room in the rear of their building, facing Sprigg Street just off Broadway. Again, a key location, affordable with familiar and trusted owners. They took it almost immediately. Purple Spaghetti had found a home.

Todd and Dawn Field weren't as fortunate. Without any real connections in the Cape Girardeau business-scape, the Fields were on their own when they put together their dream earlier this year: Cat In the Cream ice cream parlor. As a result, Dawn said a bitter taste from the experience still lingers.

"We're just normal, nobody blue-collar people who took a chance," she said standing in her vacant ice cream parlor at 2532 William St. prior to its daily 2 p.m. opening. "If I had it all to do over again, I'd have done it a different way."

To punctuate her sentence, the phone rang.

"Hello? Yes, I was calling for a reference..." she began, followed by a listening pause.

"Is he dependable and a good worker?"

The Fields are longtime ice cream fans, and when Baskin Robbins closed its Cape Girardeau store two years ago they saw a chance for a business of their own to fill the void. But the idea, as it turns out, was the easy part.

After a year of planning, the couple started visiting a few banks to investigate financing possibilities. They decided rates were simply too high for a family with a combined income under $50,000 a year. Unfortunately, their income was too much to warrant aid from the Small Business Association. Their answer was to take out a second mortgage on their house and hit the commercial real estate market.

When they came upon the 1,500-square-foot store on William Street in late winter of 2004, Dawn said the location on the busy thoroughfare and the size of the place were ideal. But before signing a lease, the Fields wanted to be sure and consult a contractor to see how much more they would have to put into the building to meet their needs.

The contractor said he could do nothing without an architect's drawing. Hiring an architect began a three-way shuffle between contractor, architect and Cape Girardeau city officials that drug on for weeks, she said. In the meantime, the owners of the building were pressuring the Fields to sign a lease or risk losing the property to another tenant. Put to a decision, they signed a lease on the store in April.

As a result, the Fields were locked into a location that required more work and capital investment than initially met Dawn's eye. The building had to be rewired to accommodate the parlor's equipment, and two ADA-accessible bathrooms had to be built. The latter alone cost an extra $20,000 because a new sewer line had to be jack-hammered into the floor for an additional rest room.

"If I had known how much it was, I wouldn't have sunk my money into this place," Dawn said again, now off the phone.

While all this work was being done -- mostly by Dawn and Todd themselves -- the Fields were already paying rent. The store wasn't ready to open until June 18, over 10 weeks after the lease was signed. And when they finally opened, Dawn realized that she'd over-ordered a lot of her inventory.

"I about had a heart attack when I saw the first month's costs," she said.

But that tumult settled. Now, almost two months later, Cat in the Cream is an initial success. Good response and good receipts have given the Fields reason to project that their initial investment can be recouped in two years if business goes as expected. Dawn has also developed a better grip on ordering inventory.

"You find suppliers that work, and you learn the shortcuts," she said.

The response has been such that the Fields are even looking into opening another store, possibly in Perryville, next summer. But their immediate objective is to find more help to relieve Dawn and Todd of some hours behind the counter.

"Good help is impossible to find," Dawn said as the phone rang again.

"Yeah, hey, I called your references and they were glowing," she said into the receiver. "When do you want to get started?"

Getting Spaghetti ready

The name Purple Spaghetti was the winner in a long list of possible names for Robinett and Turner's new store. Losers included "Stuff" and "Pink and Purple." Purple Spaghetti won out because it is a combination of the owners' nicknames. Turner is obsessed with the color Purple, so much so that hardly any of his friends use his real name. Spaghetti comes from Robinett's thin, wiry body frame.

At least initially, finding good help won't be a problem for Robinett and Turner. Since they plan to be open mostly in the late afternoons and evenings, Robinett said she'll probably come in after work to man the store. This schedule will allow both her and Turner to keep their day jobs both as an extra support for the business and a safety net should the store falter.

Things haven't gone exactly as planned for these two budding entrepreneurs, either. The fire inspector's requirement that a fire door be installed between Robinett's room and the Themms' building has forced them to rearrange the layout of their store.

While waiting for the fire door to be delivered, the two have found over 30 vendors via the Internet and are getting ready to start ordering. They also have a display case donated by the building owners, shelving and a cash register. If all goes to plan, Purple Spaghetti will be ready to open to the public within the next month. Robinett is excited. She hopes that others are, too.

"We're starting to see people looking into the window from their cars stuck at the stop light outside," she said. "Sometimes you can read their lips, saying 'What's going in there?'"

trehagen@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137