Category Archives: Entrepreneurial Women

By Susan Elise Campbell

Ever since she could remember, Danielle Kresge wanted to run a hair salon and spa.

Half her dream was realized when she started Elle Salon three years ago in South Glens Falls. Now in her new location at 113 Saratoga Ave., Kresge has the room to add staff and services to give clients the full spa experience.

“At the other location, I had a good starting point to get my feet wet,” she said. “I’m actually surprised at how quickly we grew, and proud of it.”

Once she determined to move and expand, Kresge knew she would put her clients first. The location she found on Facebook was a brand new building in which she could picture clients “relaxing and enjoying themselves,” she said.

“The space is like an open canvas with white walls and high ceilings,” she said. “It has a clean, breezy, airy feeling.”

Since the move the first week of August, there have been a few new hires, bringing the staff to 12.

By jill Nagy

Just past her one-year anniversary, Leslie Swedish is finding Moxxi Coffee Co., her new coffee business, “nothing short of a pleasure.”

The company sells its own blends of coffee online and through retail outlets and “business is going really well.”

Swedish designs the blends—there are six so far—in cooperation with Chris’ Coffee Service in Latham. Chris’ imports the coffees and roasts and mixes the blends to her order. Coffees are organic and fair-traded.

Typically, there are between two and four varieties to a blend. The three basic blends are blond ambition, a four-bean blend of lightly roasted coffees; bold ambition, a dark roast blend of monsoon and Malabar coffees; and wild ambition, an “almost espresso” blend of extra dark Peruvian and Indian coffees.

In addition, Swedish has concocted three varieties of herbal and botanical infused coffee blends: relax, refocus, and revive. A winter blend is under development. Swedish also offers a variety of coffee mugs.

For every item sold, the company donates $1 to the Moxxi Women’s Foundation that makes grants “to support ambitious women in the Capital region.” The foundation, nonprofit charitable corporation, has been active since last March. Grantees include a local woman who sells soaps and candles and will use the grant money to buy a tumbler for polishing stones.

By Christine Graf

Before owning her own company, Rose Miller worked in human resources for companies of all sizes. Around 2005, she began to seriously consider the idea of opening her own human resources consulting business.

“You have to do a scout model. Always be prepared and get as many facts as you can,” she said.

Her research revealed that the number-one failure point for HR professionals who went out on their own was loneliness and isolation. A self-described people person, Miller found that concerning.

“I saw myself quickly becoming dissatisfied with working out of my house,” she said. “I also knew that one of my strengths is building great teams. I knew I didn’t want to work all by myself. I wanted to build a company.”

Her first step was to create a business plan. According to Miller, it is essential for anyone who is thinking about starting their own business.

“So many entrepreneurs don’t write a business plan, but you really need to sit down and go through a professional business plan because it makes you formulize things and delve into areas that you may not be strong at. To put it in writing is an amazing exercise.”

While working on her business plan in 2005, she attended a chamber of commerce meeting and was seated with the managing partner from a local CPA firm. After learning that his firm was interested in starting an HR consulting practice, she told him that he had found the person to run it.

By Susan Elise Campbell

Interactive Media Consulting LLC owner Beth Moeller, PhD. is helping solve digital marketing problems for small businesses and nonprofits—markets she said she slipped into during the company’s earliest beginnings.

The company is marking its 25th anniversary this year.

“It was First Night 1996 and we were involved in organizing communications to create a web site,” said Moeller. “There was no money to pay us, but I knew we would do it.”

An arts enthusiast, Moeller has donated valuable professional services ever since to sustain and establish the arts and art education from her alma mater, Clarkson University in Potsdam, down to the Capital District.

She was teaching at Clarkson and was about to get married when she decided to create an LLC. That decision led the couple to the Saratoga area and the pro bono web site that introduced her programming and web design skills to the merchants and sponsors of Saratoga’s First Night.

“Some of those companies called and asked me to do their websites, and some of them are still clients,” she said. “I was at the right place at the right time with the right expertise.”

Moeller started her company at a time when the HTML programming language was “taking off” and more and more advertisers were promoting their websites on TV and in print, she said.

By Christine Graf

While still a student at Galway High School Kylie (Curtis) Holland started working at the front counter at Curtis Lumber in Ballston Spa. Today, the sixth-generation member of the Curtis family is preparing for the day when she will take the helm of the family business.

Her father, Jay Curtis, currently serves as CEO and president of the 131-year old company that has 23 locations and approximately 700 employees. He took over in 1991, the same year that Holland was born.

During the four years that Holland attended college at SUNY Cortland, she made a five-hour round trip each weekend in order to continue working at Curtis Lumber. After graduating with a degree in criminal justice in 2012, she considered attending law school.

“I was faced with a choice of either you go to law school or you work (at Curtis Lumber),” she said.  “Because of the intensity of law school, I knew I couldn’t do both. That was kind of my moment where I had to choose. I just couldn’t imagine what it would look like to walk away from Curtis Lumber.  I loved it, and I loved the people. That’s when I decided this was the path for me after all.”

Although her older brother, Christopher, also works for Curtis Lumber, he is not interested in taking over when their father retires.

By Susan Elise Campbell
Katie Camarro says she has “the sweetest job in the world.”
She and husband Jeff Shinaman founded and co-own Sundaes Best, a brand of hot fudge sauces and other natural ingredient chocolate products that came right out of the family kitchen.
Camarro is a third generation Saratogian who spent most of her career with Toy Works in Washington County’s Middle Falls. As national sales manager she “loved the job” but knew she was “grossly underpaid,” she said.
This was 25 years ago, a challenging time because her father was ill and in the hospital. He sensed something was wrong when she visited him, and in one of their last conversations together he advised her, “think about doing something on your own.”

By Christine Graf
Leah’s Cakery, located in the historic West Side General Store building at 3 Curry Street in Round Lake, opened in 2013.
Owner Leah Stein worked as a cake decorator for the Bread Basket in Saratoga Springs before owning her own shop. Prior to that, Stein worked as a park ranger and environmental educator.
When Stein made the decision to change professions, she enrolled in the culinary program at Schenectady County Community College (SCCC). The Lake George native comes from what she describes as a “culinary inspired” family, and she fell in love with baking as a young girl. It was while making custom cakes as a side job while working in environmental science that she decided to pursue baking full time.
“I grew up in a tourist town with tons of entrepreneurs around me,” she said. “A lot of people had their own businesses, and it was always something that was in the back of mind as an attainable goal.”

By Lisa Balschunat
A 19-year concert event merchandiser from California, who has lived in Saratoga Springs since 2016, is now the owner of the first indoor dog park in the city.
Marijo English wanted to give pet owners a much-needed alternative to rainy, snowy or sub-zero walks for their canine pets. The building also provides an opportunities for training, grooming and year-round socialization.
English, owner of Chow Bella, 50 West Ave. in Saratoga Springs, created the business out of necessity for her pet beagle and convenience for herself. She was looking to do something new.
“I was tired of the high stress and traveling. I moved to Saratoga four years ago. I looked into franchises, but none of them are social places,” she said.

By Susan E. Campbell
Lisa Avila is the only woman among five founders of Kitware Inc., developer of an innovative visualization software toolkit and other open source platforms.
The business partners worked together at GE’s research unit in the mid-1990s. Up to that time, there was no software available to visualize one’s data without purchasing an expensive license. In 1998 they went out on their own and developed an open source product that could be downloaded and used directly.
“The toolkit may come close to providing free solutions the user needs,” said Avila. “But our revenue comes from modifications they cannot provide for themselves that bring the software to the next level.”
Now 20 years later, this international company has 150 employees in five offices, including headquarters in Clifton Park. Avila attributes their exponential growth to improved functionality and popularity of their software platform, she said.

Women-owned businesses continue to fuel the economy and now represent 42 percent of all businesses — nearly 13 million — employing 9.4 million workers and generating revenue of $1.9 trillion, according to an annual State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, commissioned by American Express.
In 2019, U.S. women with diverse ethnic and geographic backgrounds started an average of 1,817 new businesses per day between 2018 and 2019, down only slightly from the record-setting 2018 number of 1,821.
The annual report, based on U.S. Census Bureau data adjusted by Gross Domestic Product data, found that women-owned businesses continue to trend above all businesses. Over the past five years:
• The number of women-owned businesses increased 21 percent, while all businesses increased only 9 percent.
• Total employment by women-owned businesses rose 8 percent, while for all businesses the increase was far lower at 1.8 percent.
• Total revenue for women-owned businesses also rose slightly above all businesses: 21 percent compared to 20 percent respectively.