Business Web site praises the state's family friendly factors
By Jenifer K. Nii
Deseret Morning News
Utah's metropolitan areas dominated a new survey of top locales for women entrepreneurs, according to a report by AllBusiness.com.
AllBusiness.com, a California-based business Web site, commissioned a survey of nearly 700 business executives — including 287 women — at small- to medium-sized businesses, asking them to rank various attributes by importance.
It then looked at the federal government's list of 379 metropolitan areas, with a close eye toward three main factors: indicators of economic growth and business incubation, and a third area, which looked for areas with low crime rates, low property tax rates, high household income, modest real estate prices, rapid population growth and pedestrian-friendliness. Those factors were chosen and weighted because female respondents ranked them of particular importance.
Based on those factors, AllBusiness found that four of the top 10 U.S. metropolitan areas for women entrepreneurs are in Utah, including Provo-Orem, St. George, Ogden-Clearfield and Logan.
"I'm not surprised," said Erica Whittlinger, member and Salt Lake City Chapter facilitator of the Women Presidents' Organization. "I think the results of the survey are just a testimony to the wonderful quality of life we have here in Utah, and to see so many of our major areas included is wonderful. We've really blanketed the whole state."
Whittlinger said the survey's emphasis on certain "family-friendly" factors — low crime rates, for example, and pedestrian-friendliness — perhaps does reflect a difference in women's approach to business ownership and may have swung the results in Utah's favor.
"I think part of it is that clearly these sorts of factors, I think women may think of them more as business issues than men do," Whittlinger said. "In general, they are more family-friendly values.
"But the cities on this list, they just look like great places to live. I think many of them would rank very high on any lists of quality of life factors. I don't know if it's the nice areas that encourage women to become entrepreneurs, or if women entrepreneurs pick these areas. I think it's a little bit of both."
Beth Colosimo, a WPO member and owner of Wasatch Home, a home furnishing store in Draper, opened her business 21 months ago because she wanted to have a career on her own terms. After 20 decades toiling in "Corporate America," Colosimo said she wanted to assert some control: over time spent with her family, her career path trajectory, her destiny.
"I did the whole 'climb the corporate ladder' thing and realized that at the end of the day, I was pretty much just a W-2 earner," Colosimo said. "My life was being dictated to me."
Two years ago, she had no experience in furniture sales or upholstering. She didn't immediately find support in the community, mentors she could look to. But she was determined. She believed she'd identified a market niche she could fill and the skills to fill it.
"But make no mistake, a start-up business is definitely no picnic," she said. "It's a tremendous amount of work. I wouldn't say there's a lot of infrastructure or support for women business owners that I've found. But it has been very rewarding.
"It's been great that I'm at home at night, and that I can pick my kids up from school or attend a sporting event they're in, without answering to anyone but me. It's been a blast to conceive a new concept and see it come to fruition, to have a viable business that people talk about, come to and a product they're pleased with."
Soon, Wasatch Home will expand to a newer, larger building at the Draper Peaks shopping complex.
"I'll say this: A lot of people talk about wanting to be their own boss," Colosimo said. "Fewer actually do it. But if you've got a good concept and a good business plan, and you're willing to put the time and work into it, there's no reason you won't succeed. And then, at the end of the day, you're controlling your own future instead of the Ivory Tower. And that's pretty amazing."
AllBusiness.com also looked at metropolitan areas of varying sizes, and Utah cities fared equally well.
Among cities or metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more, AllBusiness.com's top 10 locales are: Raleigh-Cary; Washington-Arlington-Alexandria; Bethesda-Gaithersburg-Frederick; Denver-Aurora, Colo.; Salt Lake City; Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, Calif.; Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minn./Wis.; Boise City-Nampa, Idaho; Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga.; and San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, Calif.
Among medium-sized metropolitan areas (those with populations of 175,000 to 500,000) AllBusiness.com's top areas for women entrepreneurs are: Provo-Orem; Ogden-Clearfield; Fort Collins-Loveland, Colo.; Boulder, Colo.; Fort Walton Beach-Crestview-Destin, Fla.; Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Ark./Mo.; Naples-Marco Island, Fla.; Huntsville, Ala.; Charlottesville, Va.; Durham, N.C.
And the top among small metros (50,000 to 175,000) are: St. George; Logan; Morgantown, W.Va.; Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Radford, Va.; Winchester, Va./W.Va.; Iowa City, Iowa; Columbia, Mo.; Idaho Falls, Idaho; Dubuque, Iowa; Jacksonville, N.C.; and Santa Fe, N.M.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------