A short YouTube interview with Jenny and Allen of Missouri Star Quilt Company describing how the business began (family bought Jenny a large quilt machine that led to acquiring a building), how they started making YouTube tutorials which created demand for coordinating fabric (leading them to start selling fabric), and rapid physical growth (expanded from 5,000 sq ft to 42,500 sq ft). Allen credits the SBA for providing loans and supportive guidance during warehouse expansion and recommends that other small business owners engage mentors and use resources like the SBA.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. Basically, what happened was the kids wanted to provide something for me to do in my retirement, and they got me a quilt machine. The machine came, it was too big for our house, so we had to buy a building, and now we had a business, so we had a quilt machine in a building. Allen was very aware of what was going on online, and so he asked me one day if I wanted to do tutorials. And I said, sure. What's tutorial? I had never been to YouTube. I didn't know anything about that new frontier that was out there. And so we started teaching on YouTube and people started asking for the fabric that we were using. And of course, we weren't even selling fabric at the time. And so we decided that we would start carrying fabric that coordinated with the tutorials that we were doing. And so just very quickly, it became a big business.
We went from 5,000 square feet to 42,500 square feet. Right. It was a huge leap forward for us in terms of capacity and what we were able to do with our business. The SBA helped our business by loaning us the money to do more, to sort of fulfill our vision for where we want this company to go. They were fantastic to work with because they didn't come in and try and direct what we were going to do or dictate how we could grow our business. They were literally there as a helper. They were a support for us. The staff that we worked with was just tremendous. They came in and sort of helped us walk through what it looks like to build your first warehouse. You know, some of this, they hadn't done it either, but we all sort of worked together to put together the right plan to move forward, where we all feel very confident in the next steps. So what kind of tips would we give to other small business owners? Engage with mentors. Go find people that have done it before. Use the sba, for example, like they are going to be a great mentor to you as you stumble through some of these. But go and find other people that have done it, other people in your industry. You'd be amazed how many people are so down. Answer questions.
