Designing Woman

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.

This article was originally published in the November 1998 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Designing Woman.