Profiles in Business: Susan Dollenmaier and Anichini

Vermont Business Magazine, Jul 01, 2003 by Marcel, Joyce

Dollenmaier returned to Wisconsin for another year and a half, then spent a summer working in New York City and, at 21, traveled for six months in Europe by herself. Then she got an apartment in New York and worked there until she fell in love again, in 1970, and moved to Boston. There she became politicized.

"I wanted to change the world," Dollenmaier said. "It was feminism more than overthrowing the government. I started reading Buckminster Fuller. I wrote to him, and he wrote back. He was then a professor emeritus at Southern Illinois University teaching design science. He told me to come out and study with him. I also became interested in meditation."

After more wanderings, Dollenmaier, now married, went to Illinois to study.

"Fuller invented the word synergy," Dollenmaier said. "And he integrated spirituality and science. He was a very spiritual man, using the laws of physics to explain some of the most abstract aspects of Vedic philosophy. I learned that we all have the ability to change the world if we accept the idea that we're all connected. Now, with computers and email, we really are all connected. So I get the degree at 26. I'm meditating regularly. I'm in love with this guy. And I go to Spain for six months to learn to be a meditation teacher."

Vermont

Dollenmaier worked in Los Angeles as a meditation teacher, then in Kansas City as a social worker, and came to Vermont in 1975 to join a sister. Once here, she started working for various human resource agencies.

"I set up the first senior centers around here," Dollenmaier said. "I developed the meals on wheels program. Then I managed a program for low income women, setting up a health screening program for breast, pap smears and colon cancer. I would go to each town, find a doctor, find a nurse, set it up, do the advertising, and get people in. That was fun." Each of these programs was funded for a certain amount of time, and when the funding ran out, Dollenmaier had to find another job. "I became disenchanted with the system, and with what the costs were," Dollenmaier said. "For every dollar that these human resource programs spend, a very small percentage actually gets to the people who need it. I was very aware of the image of the self-perpetuating bureaucrat, and I didn't want to be one. From the age of 30 to 35, I kept having better-paying jobs and the whole nine yards. I was starting to think, 'Where's my future in all this? "The pinnacle would be moving to Washington DC and running a program. Do I want to do

that?"

Anichini Old

In a move that Dollenmaier now considers "unexplainable," she quit at the age of 35. That was about the time she met Patrizia Anichini at a Tunbridge wedding and they discovered they shared a love for vintage clothing and antique textiles.

"So I went down to New York with a suitcase full and we started wholesaling door to door," Dollenmaier said. "I went, 'Wow! I can buy this for 10 cents and sell it for a hundred bucks!' Up until this point I'd been working for a weekly paycheck my whole life. So I quit my job and said, 'I'm going to try to do this. This is something I like.'" Antique dealers are a special race, Dollenmaier said.