Designing Woman
Dyslexia couldn't keep this award-winning entrepreneur from multimillion-dollar success.
You could say this year's winner of the Office
Depot/Entrepreneur Magazine Entrepreneurial Woman of the
Year award had designs on success as far back as 1979. That's
when Terri Bowersock borrowed $2,000 from her grandmother, leased a
small building, and filled it with "gently used"
furniture--her own and her mother's. No sacrifice was too great
as Bowersock launched Mesa, Arizona-based Terri's Consign &
Design Furnishings, the little consignment shop that has grown into
a franchised chain of 12 superstores in five states and boasts
annual sales of $15 million.
A star entrepreneur in the making, Bowersock set out to create a
business of her own straight out of high school. Her motivation was
simple: She was incapable of filling out a job application to work
for someone else. As a result of the dyslexia she'd suffered
from since childhood, any position requiring strong reading and
writing skills was out of the question. So she drew on the well of
determination that got her through school and allowed herself to
dream big. "Sometimes our disabilities give us our
drive," says Bowersock, 42.
Her vision of a consignment-only store was rare in those days,
but Bowersock was used to swimming upstream. She credits one of
Entrepreneur magazine's business start-up guides with
steering her in the right direction. "The guide was written
simply. It really helped me for the first few years,"
remembers Bowersock, who paid close attention to the list of common
reasons businesses fail. Avoiding the traditional consignment
advertising in the classifieds, which she saw as inefficient,
Bowersock launched a TV advertising campaign to educate viewers on
the joys of low-priced, upscale consignment furnishings. Her
creative approach worked, and the business took off.
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