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Client Success Stories General Client Success: The Creative Living Room
Client Success Stories General Client Success: The Creative Living Room
| Client Success: The Creative Living Room |
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| Written by Administrator |
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“Curiosity in children”, “feeling and being inspired”, “You have to try this”, and “fun” are just a few key phrases that the four directors of The Creative Living Room want to hear the families that attend their classes express about their business. Allison DeSalvo, Rosemary Fox, Elizabeth Bromley, and Lynn Falk are four inspirational women who have created a successful start up business in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. These four women have come together to create a place with endless possibilities for their clients to be creative. They offer music, dance, art and theater classes, Spanish through music, cultural enrichment programs and performances for children and adults. It all started with Allison’s concept fifteen years ago. Allison was living in New York and had always thought about having her own teaching and performance arts center one day. Upon moving to Swarthmore, she noticed a building for rent in town. The moment she saw the space, she realized that her vision finally had the perfect opportunity to come alive. During my interview with Lynn, she commented on how Allison and she felt an immediate connection when talking about the arts. “I met Allison while she was working as the Children’s Programmer at Swarthmore Library. We all brought our children there and I knew she had a strong background in the arts from her beautiful voice and theatrical reading of stories. In casual conversation, I mentioned that I was going to start teaching Creative Movement classes at the Swarthmore Community Center and Allison said she was going to call me to discuss an idea.” It was auspicious meetings like this that Allison had with Rosemary and Elizabeth too that brought this special and talented team together. From the beginning there was a wonderful connection between all four women. All four women came together in Fall of 2007 and had weekly meetings to discuss how they could make their vision a reality. All four agreed that being able to have their own space where they could be creative and in control of their work was the major factor leading them to start a business together at this particular time in their already busy lives. They divided the responsibilities of the business between each of them. Allison is the Programming and Business Development Director, Rosemary is the Marketing Director, Elizabeth is the Financial and Website Director, and Lynn is the Operations Director. Like any businesses involving multiple owners, they come together to make major decisions. After interviewing each of the directors individually, it was easy to see it was a perfect split of responsibilities. For example, when interviewing Elizabeth (Financial and Website Director), she expressed how she was good with numbers and learned how to put a website together on her own from start to finish. You can see her incredible work on their website: www.thecreativelivingroom.com/Index.htm. During the initial phases of the business they experienced a few difficulties but were able to accomplish their vision in September of this year. Though this was not an easy task for any of the ladies, they managed to start a company which has become profitable. The mission statement and vision statements can also be found on their website at www.thecreativelivingroom.com/TCLRAboutUs.htm. The mission statement expresses the idea of having the ability to “Inspire, Connect, Create!” with their students. Their clientele includes all ages from newborn to senior citizens. Currently, the center offers more classes for children than adults. The owners however, will be attempting to reach more adults through advertising. They also have the ability to run classes for children with a variety of special need including autism. During a visit to the studio, a class for special needs children was underway. That experience made it clear that The Creative Living Room is not only a place for recreation but is really a place for rejuvenating one’s mind, body, and soul. They have many offerings such as “Mommy and Me classes”, classes for infants and toddlers, school age kids and classes for adults. It is a very cultured environment with infinite potential. The full version of their mission statement states: “The mission of The Creative Living Room ™ is to provide a new creative arts space where families can come together to celebrate the arts, share, learn and grow, and in so doing, receive renewed energy, inspiration, and understanding to bring into their lives, their homes, and their communities”. Even though they opened in September, the directors discussed how successful they think they have been up until this point and what challenges they have faced. Elizabeth commented that so far everything seems to be going well but there have been a few challenges with the classes. An example she provided was finding the right times for the appropriate ages because their morning classes are not filling as frequently as their afternoon classes. Rosemary agreed with Elizabeth on their success thus far but thinks that they need to find a way to reach out more to communities other than Swarthmore. Allison adds that their start up costs were a little more expensive than anticipated; however, they have been able to keep up with the costs through the existence of a strong clientele base each one had developed prior to opening the business. Lynn talks about their success in terms of opening on time; apparently there are other local businesses that were supposed to open before them but are still in the planning and renovation stages. Speaking of the beginning stages of the business, the directors experienced trouble early on with coming up with a name. Being four very strong women, it took them a long time to agree on a name for the business. They originally wanted to call the business “The Creative Space”, however by the time they went though the legalities the name was found to already be trademarked by a company in California. This was a difficult and emotionally draining time. It took them a long time to reach a consensus on a different name, which caused a huge delay in their progress. While interviewing Rosemary, she brought up an amazing point about emotions. She commented that it’s been a challenge to separate emotions when making business decisions. Learning to separate emotions now, rather than later on in their business careers, will help them tremendously. Balancing both family and business life has also been a struggle. Three out of the four ladies have children and find it hard to separate family life from work. Their responses were as follows: “Yes, it is impossible” stated Elizabeth. “Work comes home and home goes to work”, “Sometimes I go home to get work done because there are too many distractions” emphasizes Allison, Rosemary comments that “It is good for my kids to see mommy going to work and I just need this for myself as well”, Lynn said that it has been easier since the renovations on the space had been completed. “I am trying to be around as much as possible for my kids and husband and find that I am not always left with enough time to do my work (hence the late nights) or enough time for personal activities.” The ladies are now enjoying their opening success, but it has not stopped them from preparing for the future. Elizabeth is using QuickBooks for all her accounting needs but expects in the future to have an accountant help them with their financials. She also made an excellent point about incorporating the website to an online registration process that can be integrated with QuickBooks. With the technology growing rapidly, this is a wise choice however it could be expensive to implement. Allison agreed with the idea of outsourcing the administration part of the job to help relieve some of the responsibilities that will continue to grow over time so they focus on promoting the business and teaching quality classes more. Rosemary would like to be able to accept credit cards and find a better way to manage inventory. Lynn agreed with Rosemary about finding a better way to keep track of items at the shop. Currently they have a supply area that everyone uses for their classes. By being able to keep track of how much the art class uses and how much the music class uses, it will help determine the right price to charge clients for taking a class. These four women are doing a wonderful job so far. They were very energetic and fun to interview. Even though they didn’t know everything there is to know about business, they didn’t let that stop them. The directors were asked to complete a SWOT analysis for the business. Having such a well rounded group of partners is a very strong competitive force they have against their competition. As a group of four strong women, they offer a Best-Cost Provider strategy. This strategy emphasizes taking a product and selling it at a moderate cost but still giving customers value for their money. With the economy the way it is now it will be interesting to see if their winter registration will be affected by it; however, the ladies are hopeful and feel they won’t be affected that badly. Thank you to Elizabeth, Allison, Lynn, and Rosemary for sharing their success story. Best of luck in the future!
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