Several months deep in this recession, the positive stories are few and far between. But this is one of them. This is a sure sign that brighter days are ahead and that we’ll be in good hands when we get there. While the talking heads spew venom night after night and hint not-so-subtly that the apocalypse may be near – at least during sweeps weeks – a new, undaunted and ambitious generation of business owners is chasing down its dreams and laying the groundwork in many of our towns for how commerce will be conducted once the smoldering rubble is removed. Quietly, they are tailoring their outfits to a degree that we have not seen since pre-WalMart, discussing long-lost notions like integrity and personal touches. Their hope will soon become our hope. Meet the next generation.

By Scott Edwards

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....HEATHER DEMPSEY-GADE    33 / Owner, The Face and Body Spa, Yardley

For some, launching a small business is such a whirlwind experience that years pass by before the reality of the situation sets in, if even then. Dempsey-Gade, however, is not one of them. She’s felt every one of the days that have comprised the nine years that she’s been a spa owner. Being forced to literally start with nothing – no friendly advantage, no loan from a bank, not even a piece of new furniture – will harden a person. At 24, Dempsey-Gade opened in a small space on Canal Street in Yardley with a borrowed sofa table as a manicuring desk and a dream to carve out her own niche in the business she loved, something closer to her modest, yet profound beliefs. In the years that followed, she was burned by employees she trusted and treated like family and she struggled to grow without losing her integrity, all the while never securing a loan. But she never wavered. “I have a scary thing that I just don’t ever think that I’m not ready to do something,” Dempsey-Gade says. “It kind of comes with some trouble sometimes.” Now a little over a year at a new, larger space on Yardley’s Main Street and in the midst of developing her own line of organic, vegan-friendly skincare products, Dempsey-Gade finally has begun searching for some inner peace of her own.

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....KATRA MICHENER  33 / Owner, Love Illuminati, Newtown

“I’d like to start by saying I was born to do this,” says Michener, who has a definite sense of the dramatic, a vestige of her earlier life as a dancer. Michener is equal parts diva, saying things like, “making sure that we’re all staying true to the vision,” and good daughter (“I love when I make my mom feel better about herself.”). But she is no less sincere in either form. Michener was drawn to Newtown, not only because it made New York and Philadelphia easily accessible but because her family is there. The Vision speaks to her dedication to and the sacrifices she makes on behalf of both the boutique, which she opened in 2007, and her own line of women’s clothing. “Once I decided this career was for me, I felt so shallow. It’s clothing,” says Michener, who began making handbags during her downtime as a waitress in Philadelphia and then clothing at the request of friends before traveling to a market in New York every weekend where she began to connect with the people buying her own designs and madeover vintage pieces. “But it’s more than that. It’s about feeling positive and radiating that out. And that is not shallow.” The Vision is also a reminder for her to remain on course, to remain true to her instincts. In late April, Michener launched the Love Illuminati online store, which she sees eventually trumping the actual store – and enabling her to have more time – a precious commodity in her world – to fully develop her line.

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....CAILEN ASCHER POLES  23 / Owner, Cailen Ascher Design, Stockton, NJ

Poles knew by the start of her senior year at Muhlenberg College what she sensed even before she enrolled there: She wanted to be an interior designer. Poles entered young adulthood with a number of creative interests – cooking, fashion, interior design – and confidence that she would some day pursue one of them in a business of her own. So while embarking on such an endeavor fresh out of college – she graduated last May – and in the middle of a recession may seem like a reach, it’s not for Poles, who says she wanted to take the chance before she became complacent working for someone else. Still, it’s been an adjustment for Poles, who secured some home staging work early on through her realtor father. There were many days, though, when her efforts amounted to little, if anything. She’d drive to nearby towns and leave business cards and flyers wherever she could, letting some doubt seep in when the phone didn’t ring afterward. And then Poles came across the Web site for the annual Bucks County Designer House and inquired about designing a room, even though she missed the application process – “I thought they were going to give me a closet, if I got anything,” Poles says. She landed a bedroom – as well as potentially much more. She estimates that 8- to 10,000 people will come through the house once it opens May 3.

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....GABRIELLE CARBONE and MATTHEW ERRICO  32 and 34, respectively / Owners, The Bent Spoon, Princeton, NJ

When I ask Carbone, “Why ice cream?” She looks at me with an expression that says, “Are you serious, dude?” She and partner Errico are, in that way, very much kids living out their ultimate fantasy. Even once we start talking about the intricacies of running their business, everything, without fail, comes back to the ice cream. The concept, they say, was never in question. They discussed it for a while, and once they began making serious inquires, like finding a location, the process shot ahead of them, through pure “inertia,” Carbone says. Together, they handled each challenge as it presented itself, from securing a bank loan to laying down the cafe’s wood floor. They marched into the unknown with equal parts naïve optimism and Teflon-strong confidence. “It wasn’t cavalier, like going into this will be awesome,” Errico says. “We just never had that feeling like this was going to fail.” Bound by pure trust, Carbone and Errico, who met while students at the College of New Jersey, stayed true to themselves and to each other, which meant making ice cream their way and utilizing the vast amount of farm fresh ingredients around them, even if it was more labor-intensive. Five years in, their goals remain immediate: Make the operation greener, the ice cream better. “We definitely are not going to grow in the traditional way,” Carbone says. “Whatever it winds up being, it will be some sort of growth based upon what we can do to keep the integrity of the business.”

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....JENNIFER ZADNIK  33 / Owner, Salon Metro, Morrisville

Owning a salon, for Zadnik, is a means to an end, rather than the end itself. After making up her mind in the ninth grade that she needed to be a stylist, the ensuing years assumed the form of a gradual, steady progression, from student, to shampoo girl, to stylist, to salon manager to salon owner. And back to stylist, her first and true love. Zadnik’s goal behind opening Salon Metro in November 2001, at 26, was simple: To create a welcoming, non-threatening environment for clients and employees alike. What resulted is a salon that is the purest reflection of Zadnik. Located at the end of a nondescript strip mall across from a quiet residential neighborhood, Metro delivers a humble initial impression, not unlike Zadnik, who winced first at having to describe herself and then again at having to be photographed. But housed inside is a flat-out funky interior shaped by green and purple hues and flamboyant art. When I ask Zadnik what she looks for in stylists, it feels like an apt description of herself: “A very inside hunger to want to be here and to really want to make people stay. A certain look. An attitude. In a very, very positive way.” In other words, she – and the salon – are reserved to a point. Once comfortable, the creativity assumes control.

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....LISA WITKOSKY   31 / Co-owner, The Nest Interiors, Newtown

Owning a business at the heart of picturesque State Street in quaint Newtown, her hometown, is still a bit surreal for Witkosky, even nearly four years after opening the trendy home décor store with partner Lynn Natale. Completing the recent, total upheaval of her life, Witkosky was married two years ago, another relatively unforeseen development. Witkosky envisioned some day owning a business of her own. She just didn’t imagine that it would be this particular business and that it would come together as perfectly as it has. Witkosky, as she describes it, followed Natale’s lead at first. Witkosky was feeling frustrated with her job, so Natale, her co-worker at the time, suggested they go into business for themselves. Natale, who had an interest in interior design, determined the nature. Witkosky studied business in college and was more enamored with the notion of running a business. She’s since grown to love home décor. But when she describes shopping for the store as a kind of adventure, she uses phrases like “reasonable price point,” which exposes her passion for practicality – and the bottom line. Soft-spoken, but driven, Witkosky also cochairs the wildly successful Newtown Brewfest. “I just really enjoy starting something from nowhere and seeing it become something,” she says. A second store is a distinct possibility, Witkosky says. Almost anything is possible now, she seems to realize. But, for the time being, she’s quite content with her life exactly as it is.

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....SARA ROBERTSON   24 / Co-owner, The Lion and the Unicorn, Newtown

When her classmates at the Fashion Institute of Technology were scrambling to line up entry-level jobs after graduation, Robertson was traveling home to Langhorne on weekends to tackle the massive amount of work that needed to be done for an upscale children’s clothing boutique that she planned to open in September with partners Rachel and Paul Blancato, 34 and 41, respectively. Needless to say, it was an overwhelming experience, which is exactly the type of environment that the energetic-verging-on-hyper Robertson thrives in. Wearing a dress she made herself and speaking in a raspy voice – the kind that emerges after too little rest – Robertson races through blurred descriptions of juggling customers on a busy Saturday at the store and her many ambitions away from it, like staging a fashion show in town, designing her own line and helping Katra Michener, who owns a boutique a couple of doors down, with hers. “I definitely don’t want just one thing,” Robertson says. “There are several things I want to conquer in a certain amount of time and then continue into the next kind of thing that I want to conquer.” As quickly as it came together, she has no regrets over the opening of the store. In fact, she describes it as “perfect timing,” which is the appropriate perspective for someone who lives her life in fast forward.

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....ERIC BLUM   35 / Franchise partner, 1-800-GOT-JUNK, Morrisville

Sitting in an anonymous cubicle in an anonymous building, dredging through another day as a computer programmer for AT&T, Blum opened an email sent from a friend that immediately and dramatically altered the course of his life. It contained a link to the Web site for 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the world’s largest junk removal service. Something spoke to him, to the extent that after running it past his wife, he was on a plane to Vancouver days later to visit the company’s headquarters. The seed was planted long before, Blum says. Working as an IT consultant, he was laid off after 9/11. He knew then that he needed to go into business for himself. He just didn’t know what. Until he saw the email. Everything after that only affirmed what he already knew. In August 2004, he and a helper began to work the Lower Bucks region with a single truck six days a week. Today, he has 10 employees, six trucks and everything pretty much from Doylestown to Center City as his territory. What drew him to the business and what he appreciates most today, he says, is the ability to directly and positively affect someone’s life, both customers and his staff. He sees himself as a kind of mentor to his young, sometimes directionless employees. As for his own direction, Blum describes this as a “starter business,” in part because there’s so much that he still learning and, too, because he imagines owning at least another in the near-future, something possibly along the same lines.

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....SHAEL FISHER   34 / Owner, Estetiks, Doylestown

As a young kid, Fisher would set up a lemonade stand along Route 202, in front of his family’s New Britain home. “My mother would actually charge me down to the penny for what it cost for the can of Minutemaid,” he says, laughing. A harsh, but important, life lesson learned early on, so began Fisher’s life of “hustling.” In junior high and high school, he collected everything from clothing to hard-core punk LPs from the UK and sold them to friends. After his parents yanked him out of Johnson and Wales University, where he was studying sales management – and maintaining only a C-average, he picked up a number of odd jobs, from managing a Kinko’s to working at a carwash. All the while, he kept collecting and selling on the side. “I feel like I’ve got an edge on where I can make money that, you know, pertains to my lifestyle or my interests,” he says. A little over a year ago, he opened, in the heart of Doylestown, a limited-edition sneaker and streetwear boutique. It’s not so much the culmination of a master plan as it is the product of the countless retail experiences Fisher has accumulated to this point in his life. It was an inevitable point in the progression. He is, as he was as a pre-teen, a tastemaker exposing countless others to pieces that he discovered. Only now he has a cool store to sell them in. So we gain a clearer idea of the savvy world in which he has always lived.

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.....KAITLIN SICILE   25 / Co-owner, Boutique Belle Abeille

“I guess you can call me bubbly. I’ve been called that before,” says Sicile, who never once comes across as bubbly. In fact, she’s so professional prior to saying this, that I’m caught completely off-guard. A moment earlier, Sicile did not hesitate at all to correct me when I wrongly guessed that she was following another’s template for her business because she has so little experience. She then proceeded to outline her several-step plan for proper customer service. “They have to be greeted and it has to be genuine.” This is not the directive of a bubbly person. Talkative, yes. Organized, to the point of OCD, she says. And supremely confident, which seems to stem from doing exactly what she always imagined herself doing. After studying fashion merchandising in college, Sicile bypassed job offers from large companies and instead squeezed her way into a nonexistent position with the former boutique, Violet and Blue. “I really wanted to be with the customer and not behind the scenes,” Sicile says. “I wanted the whole picture.” When the owner came to her one day and said she was closing the store, Sicile, then 23, demanded she sell it to her. A day later, she was in a lawyer’s office signing the papers with her mom as her (very) silent partner. The conversation turns to the future. “I would love to branch out, not necessarily another women’s boutique,” she says. “But I see definite possibilities, which I’m not going to get into because I don’t need anyone questioning me about them.” Yeah, definitely not bubbly.

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....JAMES SHEERIN   34 / Owner, Penn Information Technology, LLC, Quakertown

Sheerin, a self-described “computer geek,” was pressed into the role of entrepreneur after he and his wife decided that she would leave her job and stay home with their first born. The idea of existing as a single-income family suddenly left Sheerin feeling vulnerable. His plan always was to go into business for himself – he built a steady, impressive career as an IT consultant – but the timing never seemed right. And the timing, of course, was not right now. But Sheerin, then 31, accepted that that window may never arrive. “So,” he says, “it’s just a matter of do it. Just get at it because the clock is ticking on your savings.” The early days were nerve-racking. Doubt was his constant companion until he secured his first major client five months in. Then it dissipated but never fully disappeared. “Every month I crunch the numbers and sometimes I look at it and wonder, How can I still be doing this?” he says. As his sole employee, Sheerin spends most mornings “putting out fires” and then deciding which is the more pressing issue: billing clients or finding new ones, which forces a constant ebb and flow on his business, he says. But his niche at the moment, as he sees it, is that he is one man. “I do wrestle with this: I don’t know how big I want to get,” Sheerin says. “There seems to be a break point where you get so big you lose that personal touch.”

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