Eleven: Joining Forces
1991
When we replaced Phranques Gallery with a parking lot, the 7-Eleven manager wasn’t mad at me anymore. Instead, when he saw me, he threw kisses! I threw them back. It was just plain fun having The Garden Wall open and my sister working with me every day. As to the greenhouses, I thought we had enough space to last forever. But almost inevitably, in solving one problem we create another. And sometimes, its’s a bigger one.
Our new snag was a lulu! With the foliage house, the cactus house, and the newly opened Garden Wall, there were three separate buildings—three separate entrances. Our customers had to wander from one building to another, dragging their purchases with them, be they a ten-pound cactus or a five-foot palm. Most of our work was in the foliage house now, and the cactus house became an orphan child, not neglected but often unattended. There were too many times when customers were in the cactus house and we didn’t know it until they came to the foliage house for help. We were giving terrible customer service! Besides, cacti were being stolen.
On the benches in the back of the cactus house, there was a collection of very rare plants that weren’t for sale. They were more or less museum pieces I’d come across over the last ten years. They were so exotic, they didn’t even have common names, but they had incredible botanical names: Ariocarpus fissuratus, Aztekium ritterii, Lophophora williamsii, Uebelmannia pectinifera, Dioscorea elephantipes. One by one, they disappeared. It was disheartening.
There was really only one solution to the problem. The foliage house and the cactus house had to become one. Sadly, this meant taking down the cactus house and attaching two new hoops to the two foliage houses we had built five years ago. This wouldn’t be too hard, though, because when we built the last greenhouses, we installed that most consequential of all metal pieces, the “Y” yoke. And luckily,greenhouses aren’t expensive to build. With the exception of the heating and cooling systems, the pipe and plastic are relatively affordable. I couldn’t face a banker and I was sure no banker could face me, so the new greenhouses were self-funded. It took two years from the time we opened The Garden Wall to save the money.
The addition would give us four greenhouse bays, a total of 6,400 square feet, all connected and open. After moving the cactus to the most southern bay, we’d still have plenty of room for all the new varieties we were carrying: orchids, bromeliads, bonsai, flowering plants, Easter lilies, Poinsettias, even bulbs. That would reduce our entrances from three to two, and there would be employees in both buildings.
Stu came from Denver to do the work. We’d done this before, so it was kind of like shampoo bottle instructions: “wash, rinse, repeat.” With the “Y” yoke in place, we had no need to dig post holes on the side of the greenhouses we were joining, and digging the rest of the post holes with a gas-powered auger, combined with our experience from the last construction, made the work go quickly. The day we put on the poly roofs was beautiful, warm, and sunny. It snowed that night.
After the new houses were up, the bulldozer came for the cactus house. I know it sounds crazy, but it was painful for me. The cactus house was my first love, my most difficult challenge, my deepest joy—the one that almost carried me to the moon. I couldn’t watch it be crushed. I drove up Mill Creek Canyon and sat by the stream.
When I opened the Grass Menagerie in 1975, I’d joined a small group of business women who were in the early stages of forming an organization called the Utah Association of Women Business Owners (UAWBO). We had different levels of experience and expertise but we had much in common, too. We could give and gain knowledge. Despite the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, it was still difficult to get a bank loan or a line of credit without a husband’s signature or a lot of credit cards. One of our members was told by her banker, “You’ve got pretty legs but they’re not going to get you any money.” But some members had found bankers who were helpful and interested in the success of their clients. We could share contacts.
By the early 90s, we had close to a hundred members with an impressive variety of businesses, from catering to concrete cutting. We still experienced some of the same difficulties we’d encountered over the last twenty years, but there were more of us now. It wasn’t in our minds to be bucking the system—but perhaps find a way around or through it. We formed small discussion groups, becoming sounding boards for one another, and pledged to support each other’s businesses. I engaged my accountant, insurance agents, and auto repair company, to name just a few, through business relationships developed in UAWBO. The contractor who transformed the chinchilla shed into The Garden Wall, Carol Burke, was a member of our association. We were comrades in business development.
While we were not always of the same voice, and some women were more reticent about speaking out than others, our numbers had reached a critical mass: we were ready to address some of our shared problems. We all felt a little underappreciated and not taken seriously as business people, so there was a mutual feeling of frustration and exclusion. But without a doubt, our biggest shared hurdle was getting bank loans. We decided to hold “Bankers Roundtables” and invited several local, state, and national bankers to meet with us. Our conversations were open and direct, expressing our frustration with our inability to acquire loans. The bankers (all men) were like the women in that some were more willing to share their honest thoughts than others. But those who were willing didn’t hold any punches. They felt women didn’t have a grip on “finance speak,” couldn’t understand income statements and balance sheets, and were lacking in entrepreneurship. (Maybe it wasn’t in our genes.)
There was no doubt their comments were condescending and misogynist, and they stung. But there was some truth in what they said, too. The shortcomings the bankers ascribed to women apply to almost any budding entrepreneur who is more dazzled by the dream than columns of numbers. For most people, the “numbers” aspect of business is mind-numbing. And of course, understanding financial reports is critical. Financial reports are business scorecards. Many of us, especially those just starting out, vowed to get smarter about the “numbers.”
By the end of the afternoon, the smart bankers in the room must have recognized they were talking with some excellent prospective banking customers. Did any of them wonder if they’d missed the boat all these years, dismissing our market? Did they leave the meeting understanding that women should have an equal opportunity to get loans? Did they see the importance of women in a growing economy? UAWBO hoped to shine some light on businesswomen’s banking difficulties, to crack some bank vaults. It wasn’t long before many of the banks opened Women’s Financial Centers.