You Found a Rabbit Hole

Dr. Nicola Nice has a boozy dream. The Ph.D. in sociology and London native had a long career advising Fortune 500 companies on their branding and how to better understand their consumers. In the spirits sector, she worked with clients including DIAGEO, Gruppo Campari, and Bacardi USA. But when she created her own gin cordial […]

Before she founded Paradise Estates, an East Coast affordable housing business, Marcia Brown thought she would make her fortune selling hair extensions. It seemed like a good idea to break into the billion-dollar corner of the beauty industry, but she quickly learned an important lesson: “It really taught me something about myself, which is that […]

Barbara Jude Frerichs knows what it’s like to turn pain into profit. The idea for her business, High Heel Hero, started because of an injury. “After being run over in 2000 and in a leg cast on and off for over five years, I couldn’t wear my heels,” says Frerichs. Her feet would swell and […]

It’s been a long journey since Maggie Callahan ditched her big-firm legal career in 2013 to start Maggie Louise Confections. After training at culinary school and lots of hands-on experimentation, her Austin-based chocolate brand — one that mixes “delicious flavor and high quality ingredients with fashion-forward, artistic design” — has definitively broken the mold in […]

Those of us who no longer live where we grew up all have flavors we miss. It may be a hard-to-find cheese, a vegetable that doesn’t grow in our new home, or our mother’s inimitable recipes. But the van Blommestein family did more than sigh and salivate: They created a business. Ayoba-Yo is the result […]

Even those of us who devote our lives to small business don’t always walk the walk. Amazon can be so very, very convenient. But it’s important to us at Alice to shop small and local whenever we can. That’s why, when choosing the staff gifts for Alice’s holiday retreat, chief of staff Jillian Benvenuti had […]