Five home-based businesses to run now - includes tips on starting a home-based business - B.E. Report on Small Business

Black Enterprise, Nov, 1993 by Suzanne Riss

What's hot, why and how you can launch one for yourself.

There's no place like home - when it comes to starting a business. Especially now, with the unemployment rate soaring and corporate downsizing relentlessly displacing thousands of workers every month. To the laid-off toiler, the anxious second careerist and the enterprising self-starter with a dream, the home office is viewed as an attractive alternative to the traditional nine-to-five option, or lack thereof.

If you've been thinking the time is right to set up shop at home, you're not alone. Half of all businesses launched last year - about 1.5 million - were home based, and black antrepreneurs are well represented among those making their mark on the home front. Today, more than 850,000 African-Americans are working either part-or full-time from their homes, according to LINK Resources Corp., a Now York City-based research and consulting firm. Meanwhile, women - always looking for ways to satisfy both career and family needs - are starting these new businesses at twice the rate of men.

Why the dramatic rise in home work? Home businesses offer entrepreneurs the chance to embark on low-risk ventures (initial investments typically range from a few hundred to less than $5,000) that can become quite lucrative, while still allowing for the kind of flexibility that most companies can't offer. The average at-home business owner will earn $50,760 this year, according to LINK.

The five home-based businesses highlighted below are among the best bets in coming years. Selected on the basis of their low start-up costs, high marketability and income potential, all of them can be launched with no staff save one: you. In addition, they are positioned in industries expected to experience significant growth over the next decade: repair services, computer consulting, specialized services, support services and interior design. Here are some folks who are carving out successful niches for themselves in these areas.

Home-Sewn Success

When Cynthia Malone is not traveling the skies as a Delta Airlines flight attendant, she runs a custom dressmaking business out of her in Kenner, La., home. Her part-time enterprise with the upscale name of House of Malone features handmade career and evening wear. Since her home borders on New Orleans, she often designs extravagant gowns for Mardi Gras.

Malone, 41, has been sewing since she was 12 years old. She received her professional training as an assistant costume designer for the Karnes Theater in Missouri, and for Worlds of Fun, a theme park in Kansas City, but she chose to pursue a career flying the friendly skies.

Finally, in 1988, Malone turned her talents into a trade. She transformed her dining room into a sewing studio, using $2,500 in savings to purchase fabric, patterns, needles and a special cabinet with more than a dozen tiny drawers for thread, bobbins and needles. She got her first job for House of Malone by displaying design samples at a local fabric store, Sew Smart, which, in turn, passed her name and number on to interested clients.

Malone drew no salary the first year, choosing instead to invest in new sewing machines, industrial steam irons, line hemmers, a commercial cutting table and an industrial press. Malone's one-woman enterprise quickly became a family affair. Her husband, Michael, a Shell Oil Co. retiree who operates a carpet-care business out of their home, keeps House of Malone's books. Their four children also "have a hand in the business," Cynthia says. "They help me sew on snaps or buttons, whatever they can do."

Operating part-time, House of Malone grossed an estimated $4,000 last year - not bad given that annual earnings for custom clothiers typically range from $3,000 to $35,000, according to Kathleen Spike, founder of the Professional Association of Custom Clothiers (PACC). Spike, who works out of her Portland, Ore., home, says custom clothiers prices are usually based on hourly rates, which typically range from $20 to $25. Designers who streamline their product rather than produce one-of-a-kind garments can earn as much as $70,000 a year.

Malone, founder of the Louisiana chapter of PACC, plans to gradually reduce her flying schedule from its current 15 days a month, ultimately operating her home business full-time. She now works with an average of ten clients on a regular basis. That level of demand is enough to necessitate her carrying a portable sewing machine with her when she travels, so she can sew on the road - and even in the sky.

Riding An Impulse Into The Computer Biz

Randolph Carnegie was never trained in computer science. He was working as a staff assistant for Conoco Oil in Texas in 1981 when the PC appeared on the scene, and his interest was immediately piqued by the new technology. "I started working with the PCs quite a bit on my own time as a hobby," he recalls, adding, "I found out I had a natural aptitude for them."

Five years later, Carnegie had developed enough knowhow to launch a home-based computer consulting firm. From a loft overlooking the living room of his Houston townhouse, T.A.G. (Totally Awesome Graphics) Productions, was born. Carnegie started the company with about $5,000 worth of computer equipment he had accumulated over the years, and spent just a few hundred dollars on stationery and business cards. He also had a $30,000 nest egg to cushion his entry into the land of the unsteady paycheck. Asked how much time he spent mulling over his business plan, Carnegie says sheepishly, "The business was 50% research and 50% impulse."