Wadsworth has many small businesses that are owned and run by women. A few of these businesses would be Ann’s Pastry Shop, The Makery, The Makeshop, and Willow and West Wholesale. Ann’s Pastry Shop sells their homemade bakery items and drinks. Willow and West Wholesale is a wholesale pallet shop, with a retail store in addition. The Makery sells refinished and repurposed furniture. The Makeshop specializes in vintage and also hosts classes for makers. All of these businesses are local and run by women. The Bruin spoke to each one of these businesses about their experiences in running a business.
Ann’s Pastries
Owned by: The Hassinger Family
The Bruin spoke with: Cheryl Hassinger
Q:How long have you owned/run this business?
A: “Three years, it’ll be four years in September.”
Q: Are there any challenges that you have faced as a business owner because you are a woman?
A: “Probably the only one I can see, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m a woman, is probably work-life balance. But other than that, I don’t think, in the bakery business, no, I don’t think so.”
Q: What has been the most rewarding experience of being a business owner?
A: “From our standpoint, probably the customer relationships. You really get to know your customer well and you get to find out about their life, their families, their experiences, their problems, you really get good bonding relationships.”
Q: What motivated you to start business, were there any figures in your life that inspired you to do this?
A: “I think the motivation was an opportunity and that it was a community that we grew up in and loved and it was something we felt we could benefit from and that we could provide for your community. Anybody that inspired me that we could succeed would probably be our parents.”
Q: Is there any advice you would give to other women-owned businesses?
A: “Do it. You’ve got the ability. Trust your gut and plan to work hard. As long as you work hard and trust your gut, and be creative because it’s challenging every day and it changes every day.”
Willow and West Wholesale:
Owned by: Jacklyn Willoughby-Christian
The Bruin spoke with: Jacklyn Willoughby-Christian
Q: How long have you owned/run this business?
A: “Technically, this business was established in 2020. It started as a baby company, we would sell returned and overstocked baby goods and that was when I’d just found out I was pregnant with West, so that’s where the name came from, Willow and West [are] my two kids and that’s why I named it [Willow and West] because it was a baby company. Then, a year later, we decided to branch out to general merchandise and a wider market so then we changed it to Willow and West Wholesale, so that’s been since 2020 but I’ve been experimenting with the reselling industry since 2017.”
Q: Are there any challenges that you have faced as a business owner because you are a woman?
A: “It is definitely difficult to be a woman in business, the main thing is just people taking you seriously, especially right out of the gate, when nobody knows who we are, I feel like as women we have to work twice as hard just to be taken seriously. Even though, you know, I’m providing a better product than the next guy, people just tend to not take women as seriously as men. Now, I am lucky that I have help from my husband but I definitely laid down the foundation all
by myself for the first two/three years. Other than that as a woman, there is another side to it where people highly respect you and appreciate you, and it just depends on the type of person that you’re talking to. The main challenge I’ve faced is that I wanted people to take me seriously and at first it just wasn’t happening. People would shame you online, tell you you don’t know what you’re talking about, and when you do they give you a harder time.”
Q: How have you overcome these challenges?
A: “Once you establish yourself and make a name for yourself, it’s like nobody can say anything negative about you, it’s just getting to that point.”
Q: What has been the most rewarding experience of being a business owner?
A: “My favorite part about my business as a whole is that we’re not just selling a product, we’re selling a lifestyle, a dream, we’re selling a side hustle, a way for people to become independent. We’re a lot more than just a normal company. We get to help people and I think that’s the most rewarding thing, is seeing other businesses thrive because we helped them.”
Q: What motivated you to start a business, were there any figures in your life that inspired you to do this?
A: “The main thing that inspired me is going to be my children. I am a young mom, I had our daughter at 21, and I’m currently 27 about to be 28, and I think that’s also the hardest part about being in this industry so young, is a lot of people don’t take the younger generation as serious. Being that I had my children to back me up, that was my driving force. That’s who I work for, that’s who inspired me to take things to the next level because I have kids to provide for, I have to step it up, I can’t just casually work on it.”
Q: Is there any advice you would give to other women-owned businesses?
A: “Just jump. Don’t think about it too hard, just do it. Everyone is going to fail, the ones who succeed have failed several times, if not hundreds of times, and we’re only here because we failed and tried again and tried again, and eventually it happens. I believe that through failure is how you learn and if you don’t fail you’re not going to learn anything, you’re not going to grow. My biggest advice for anyone starting a business is to just not give up, just keep trying, keep pivoting, and keep trying new things, because eventually, something is going to work.”
Additional Thoughts: “We have a wholesale pallet company targeted to resellers, we have an online case pack store where people can buy just one single case in bulk instead of committing to a full pallet and then we also have the retail store for single items. So we kind of knocked out every possible way of liquidating merchandise, and I think that’s really cool and that people should be able to know that we have those different avenues”
Makery:
Owned by: Sue Kohanski, Jill Ritchie, Katy Boynar 
The Bruin spoke with: Katy Boynar
Q: How long have you owned/run this business?
A: “We have been here for six years, We started in September of 2017. It’s my mom, my sister, and I. My mom’s name is Sue, my sister’s name is Jill, and I’m Katy. We started out by repurposing furniture, refinishing furniture, and we also have over 62 consigners that are in the shop, and we also do some retail items.”
Q:Are there any challenges that you have faced as a business owner because you are a woman?
A: “We have not felt that, and we made it through COVID. If anything, we feel like people have tried to support local and support women as much as possible. Most of our consignors are women, and a lot of the retail items we get are from women-owned and women-supported businesses.”
Q: What has been the most rewarding experience of being a business owner?
A: “I think just the community around us, how everybody gets together and supports one another. We try every month to give back to a family in need. And to see the community come and rally together to help support and to donate and to be there. We’ve got a giving box out front that people will donate canned food items or clothing items for people in need that are local and they can come to the box and take whatever they need.”
Q: What motivated you to start a business, were there any figures in your life that inspired you to do this?
A: “We used to do art classes together once a week, and we started working in a workshop and doing furniture on our own, and we would go to craft fairs, and it got really hard hauling everything back and forth, and we thought ‘Hey why don’t we give it a try?” None of us had ever worked retail before and we decided to give it a go and it has been so much fun. It has been a dream to be able to work together.”
Q: Is there any advice you would give to other women-owned businesses?
A: “Just stick with your heart and go for it. If it’s on your heart and it’s your dream, just do it.”
Makeshop: 
Owned by: Andrea Stalnaker and Sarah Richards
The Bruin spoke with: Andrea Stalnaker
Q: How long have you owned/run this business?
A: “My business partner, Sarah Richards, and I, opened this space in November. We opened it up as the Makeshop to be a make-and-take event space for local makers and artisans.”
Q: Are there any challenges that you have faced as a business owner because you are a woman?
A: “When I say, ‘I own my own business,” people kind of hesitate and say ‘Really? You do? What do you do?’ ‘I own a Makeshop’ ‘Do you run it out of your house?’. They just assume, because we are women, that it’s not something where we will have a brick and mortar store, they just assume it’s like a little hobby type business that we do.”
Q: How have you overcome these challenges?
A: “Just keep putting us out there. I keep putting us on social media and I keep talking about us and we do what we can to get ourselves out there, to show people that we are a real business, owned by two women, and we’re trying to do it!”
Q: What has been the most rewarding experience of being a business owner?
A: “People that come in here and find joy out of what we do. By day we do vintage, and we have lots of people that come in, and they look around at our vintage and they’re so happy because it takes them back to a childhood memory, or something that they love or remember, it just takes them back. And we have our make-and-take classes in the evening, and people come in, and they try to do things, and they get out with friends, and they get to experience something new. So it’s just bringing joy to people, people love what we do so it makes us happy to make other people happy.”
Q: What motivated you to start a business, were there any figures in your life that inspired you to do this?
A: “My business partner and I, Sarah, we had both been doing vintage sales online, and we knew that at some point we wanted to open a space. And we knew that when we opened a vintage space we wanted to have a place where makers could share what they do. We are also makers, I make blankets and she makes jewelry, and sometimes it’s hard to find a space where you can host classes. So, we knew coming in that we wanted to do this vintage and be able to share a space with makers so they could grow their own businesses.”
Q: Is there any advice you would give to other women-owned businesses?
A: “Get out there and do it. Don’t let someone tell you that you can’t do it. You’re never going to make it if you don’t try.”
