The Janesville Culver’s Scoopie Night Pickering is the first to admit candidly that Drywater’s success had nothing to do with business acumen. “I really have no idea how to start or run a business,” he laughs. “I’m envious of people who do. I’ve got so many passions, but all my passions are doing creative things. I hate the business side of it.” Their success, he says, comes from “loving what we do. Because if it’s just about making money, there are other ways to make money. I enjoy what I get to do.” His advice for other entrepreneurs? “If you’re going to be a business owner, spend time talking to businesspeople. How much profit do you have to make to pay taxes? And then you start looking at the overhead, and insurance and all this other stuff. It’s daunting.” “On the flip side, had I known all this ... maybe I wouldn’t have gotten into business.” Fortunately for Janesville, he did. VELVET & TULLE Like Stephen Pickering, Kari Reents wanted to have a career in a field she loved, but she wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. Working as a legal administrator for a large law firm in Madison, her dream was to own a women’s clothing boutique. “I’d always had an interest in fashion,” Reents said. “And I really felt that there was a need in my local community for the products that I like to buy.” Two years before her Velvet & Tulle Boutique became a reality, Reents started the process of educating herself about the inner workings of a retail clothing operation. “I had never even worked at a retail store,” she said. “I had no idea how to run a cash register, how to purchase items, how to do accounting. I started going to trade shows, just to learn the lingo. “I went to other stores I liked that were locally owned in other communities and just started asking questions. I found that other business owners that had boutiques similar to what I wanted to open were very helpful.” When she and her husband, Shawn, felt they were financially secure enough to start the business, they “jumped in full bore.” “Instead of just trying it out and renting a space,” Reents says, “we bought a building. We refurbished the upstairs to be a rental and the downstairs to be my store.” Juggling her full-time job with “spending every other waking moment” renovating the 19th-century building with Shawn, Velvet & Tulle opened for business in downtown Janesville in January of 2018. “There were many laughs, but also a lot of tears,” Reents says about the lead-up to the opening. “Are we doing the right thing? It was hard to get any sort of business funding, not having been a business owner before. So we did finance it, mostly, ourselves. That was a challenge. It was scary, using our savings and our livable income, and putting it all into this.” Ultimately, they concluded that, “If it fails, we’ll just keep working and we’ll figure it out.” But Velvet & Tulle has done anything but fail, expanding to open a second store in Delafield in 2024. That success has come despite numerous obstacles over the life of the Janesville store. “We had the road shut down in front of our business (for construction),” Reents said. “We had the (Milwaukee Street) bridge out for longer than they expected, and COVID happened. All of those times, I’d think, are we going to survive?” Reents attributes their success to carrying unique products and providing friendly, helpful and honest customer service. “We don’t want to sell someone a pair of jeans just to make a sale,” Reents said. “We want them to look good on people, and we want people to feel good in them. We get comments from our customers all of the time that they appreciate our honesty and our transparency.” Besides attracting local customers, Velvet & Tulle’s uniqueness and approach has drawn many customers from the Beloit and Rockford areas, which gave Reents the idea of opening a second location in Beloit. But ultimately, Reents realized that a location there might cut into their Janesville business. “Delafield was a better fit,” Reents said. “(It was) far enough away to tap into a new market that wouldn’t compete with Janesville.” Her advice to entrepreneurs echoes that of Pickering: Talk to other business owners. Kari Reents opened Velvet & Tulle in 2008 Velvet & Tulle's downtown location came first, followed by an expansion to Delafield in 2024 I thought, no one is going to tell me their trade secrets. But I quickly learned that it's not a trade secret. We all want each other to succeed. www.forwardjanesville.com | 7
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