Kennett Square Business|
Women-owned businesses join Kennett Square’s vibrant downtown By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer
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or several years, Marcy Mackey was applying her talents as a wellness practitioner in her home, at client’s homes, at a local spa and at a nearby fitness center, while also managing to teach yoga at several studios in Delaware and Chester County – all while raising her three children. Mackey’s business slogan may have well read, “Have a massage table and yoga mat, will travel.” While she enjoyed the career that has become her life’s inspiration, Mackey was doing it in too many places, so this past April, she opened The Bungalow on East Cypress Street, and what were once the wishes of a road warrior brought everything under one roof. “The idea for this studio had been marinating in my heart for a long time, but it recently hit my brain,” Mackey said from her cozy studio in the heart of Kennett Square. “It said, ‘You can do this. Why are you waiting? If you don’t take that first step, you’ll never get there.’” Mackey is part of a growing group of women
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Kennett Square Life | Summer/Fall 2019 | www.chestercounty.com
entrepreneurs who have chosen Kennett Square for its trendy vibe, small-town charm, and unique array of independent shops, galleries, and restaurants, but the rise in women-owned businesses in Kennett Square is a microcosm of what’s been happening around the country. The 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report stated that women started an average of 1,821 new businesses per day in the U.S. between 2017 and 2018. This level of new business formation by women, the report said, is greater than the daily average during the pre-recession period from 2002 to 2007, the recession and recovery period between 2007 and 2012, and the post-recession period between 2012 and 2017. Since the report began detailing such numbers in 1972 – the first time the U.S. Census Bureau provided data on minority-owned and womenowned businesses – the number of businesses run by women has increased 31 times during that 48-year period, from 402,000 in 1972 to 12.3 million in 2018. Meanwhile, employment at these businesses have grown 40-fold, from 230,000 in 1972 to 9.2 million today, and revenues have risen from $8.1 billion to $1.8 trillion.