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Business
Smoky Mountain News
Business notes
The Small Business Center of Southwestern Community College will offer a free seminar entitled “How to Price Your Product or Service” from 5:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 5, at the college’s Macon Campus. Participants will learn internal and external factors to consider when setting prices. Tonya Snider of REAL Entrepreneurship will also introduce breakeven analysis as a tool for assisting entrepreneurs in measuring financial feasibility. www.ncsbc.net/center.aspx?center=75490. ••• Anne G. Garrett, superintendent of Haywood County Schools, has been named the Region 8 Superintendent of the Year. This honor includes a nomination as a candidate for the 2014 A. Craig Phillips North Carolina Superintendent of the Year Award. The nomination is a highly recognized commendation for her work and accomplishments of Haywood County Schools. ••• The Haywood County Chamber of Commerce Young Professionals received a $20,000 New Generation Leaders Grant. The program encourages young people, ages 16-30, to become more active in civic and economic affairs, in part by tackling community improvement projects. ••• The Western Carolina University School of Nursing got a $1 million federal workforce diversity grant to enroll nursing students from underserved rural populations, including recruiting nursing students from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. WCU will create the Western North Carolina Nursing Career Network Project, enabling nursing faculty to serve as mentors to ethnically diverse and disadvantaged students from Andrews, Cherokee, Murphy, Robbinsville, Smoky Mountain and Swain high schools who are interested in nursing as a career. The funds will also offer stipends for nursing students from those high schools. 828.227.7467 or www.nursing.wcu.edu. ••• Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Resort donated $15,000 to the North Carolina Senior Games for its annual Senior Games state finals. The casino has sponsored the event for 12 years. ••• The Trail Tree Coffee and Expresso Bar has opened inside Three Eagles Outfitters on Siler Road in Franklin. The Trail Tree serves lattes, cappuccinos, espresso, various blends of coffees, fruit blends, iced and blended cold coffees, shaved ice and fresh bagels with varying sweet treats as well. 828.524.9061. ••• Mountain Favors, a locally made items store that specialized in gift baskets, has opened downstairs from Twigs & Leaves on Main Street in Waynesville. 828.734.4281. ••• WNC Supply, a prepper supply and survivalist store, has opened on U.S. 441 outside Cherokee. WNC Supply is the one-stop shop for all survival materials, including: bunkers, MREs, bulk foods, long-term food storage systems, canning supplies, solar panels, faraday bags, aquaponics systems, gardening supplies,
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Stay-at-home mom finds time to start her own business BY CAITLIN BOWLING STAFF WRITER aising children is rewarding, but stay-athome moms and dads need something for themselves. While some set aside a few hours a week to themselves, Michelle Williams, a 37-year-old mother of two, decided to start a home business, a website company called Pixels in My Pocket. “I really just missed having something that was mine. I missed contributing to my family finances,” Williams said. An English literature graduate, Williams learned how to build, setup and maintain a website from a friend and former co-worker. Now, she has a suite of different, ready-made website designs for businesses that want something simple and easy to keep up. “It is very affordable. You can have a really cute website up and running for $15,” Williams said. Prices for Williams’ site designs vary depending on the features included and whether the business wants her to operate and update the website. She can also design custom sites specific to a particular business
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Ellen Walker with some of the dolls she has refurbished. Donated photo
and help bolster its online presence. For a small investment, every small business can have a website, Williams said. It doesn’t Michelle have to be a major underWilliams taking as a simple template will do. In the digital age, however, having a site for people to visit gives businesses more validity. “It just gives people confidence in a businesses,” Williams said. Because she is still a stay-at-home mom to her 8-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, Williams said she had to figure out how to juggle both her kids’ needs and those of her clients. While she is available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Williams often works some odd hours to finish tasks while the kids are asleep. “It has been a transition for us, but it has been really good,” she said, adding that it
shop when it first opened and was given a doll to refurbish. Since then, she’s fixed up more than 1,000 dolls to be sold in the hospital thrift store. The dolls usually cost between $2 and $5. “It enriches your life to be doing something for somebody else and knowing what you’re doing makes someone happy and helps people on their way to wellness,” said Walker, a retired MedWest-Harris nurse. The Harris Regional Hospital Auxiliary Thrift Shop is located on Skyland Drive and is open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 828.631.8893.
HCC strengthens ties and employment training for industry Volunteer puts passion for dolls toward fund-raising efforts Ellen Walker has a passion for giving dolls new life and sending them on to their next home. For the past two and a half years, she’s put her that passion to work raising money for the Harris Regional Hospital Auxiliary through its thrift store. Walker started buying dolls from the thrift
Haywood Community College is strengthening ties to the community through industry training with the arrival of a new Industry Training Coordinator Doug Burchfield. After 19 years at Borg Warner, Burchfield understands the industrial workplace and will draw on this knowledge as a liaison to local businesses and industries to determine their employee training needs. HCC’s customized training services for industries range from job profiling and preemployment training and assessment to posthire technical and critical soft skills training.
helps that her daughter is old enough to help around the house. Williams won the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce’s Business Start-Up Competition this year, which included a $10,000 prize. The money was the boost her budding business needed, Williams said, and it helped her buy new equipment necessary for her job. “I am so grateful,” she said. “The money that I make in my business goes to support my family, and I just don’t have the money to invest.” In addition to buying new Adobe graphic design products and an iPad, Williams purchased a much-needed new computer. Her previous one was 6 years old, which in computer years seems like decades. “It was crashing on me all the time,” she said. After moving from place to place with her parents as a child, Williams said she is happily settled in Waynesville with her husband, daughter and son. “We love it,” Williams said. “I am so excited to start this business in this area.” www.pixelsinmypocket.com.
Customized training is offered to new, expanding and existing businesses and industries providing they meet the following criteria: job growth, technology investment and productivity enhancements. The training is funded by the state and free to qualified industries. 828.564.5128 or ddburchfield@haywood.edu.
Drake Software to add 50 jobs, build call center
Drake Software, a national leader in professional tax preparation software headquartered in Franklin, is expanding their call center in Hayesville and will hire about 50 new customer service representatives to man it. A new 10,000-square-foot facility will be constructed in the Clay County Industrial/Technology Park and is expected to open in January 2014. The new building will be linked to the already established call centers in Franklin and Sylva and provide access to the same benefits and resources. Customer service representatives for Drake Software provide technical assistance to users of the software programs Drake develops, including their award-wining tax and accounting software suites. Last year, customer service representatives were able to assist more than 37,000 tax preparers in a matter of seconds during tax season.