Woman Enters Basket Business
 

Operation creates way for mom to work from home, shows off items from Indiana

By Bruce C. Smith | Staff writer

Posted: 03/11/05 - 09:32:45 am EST

 

Teresa G. Downham knows there's more than corn in Indiana, and she has created a home-based business to prove it.

Teresa Downham prepares a Everything Indiana gift basket

She assembles decorative gift baskets brimming with tasty and attractive foods and other home-grown and homemade items from businesses scattered throughout the state.

Downham and her husband, Joe, launched Everything Indiana from the basement of their Fishers home in the Winder mere development one year ago this week.

After scouting Hoosier chocolatiers, honey farmers, summer sausage factories, pretzel benders, jelly and jam canners, flavored coffee makers and others, the Downhams have assembled a veritable "best of Indiana" in culinary delights to fit in a gift basket.

"I try to include things made or grown in Indiana that not only taste good but also have a little history so we can include a brochure about the things that make each item significant," she said.

She sells versions of the baskets for prices ranging from $30 to more than $120, depending on the contents. The baskets can be shipped or delivered locally.

"There's probably nothing really difficult about it except finding the products and managing your inventory," she said.

Promotion is the most difficult challenge for such a small home-based operation on a tiny budget, she said. "Getting the word out is pretty difficult when you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on promotion."

But sales have been growing.

"A lot of people are finding us from our Web site, and we get calls from other members of the Chamber of Commerce that want baskets to give as gifts" to employees or customers, she said.

Her goal is to have a retail store in a few years, selling the decorative baskets that can brag that everything was made in Indiana.

Charlie and Glenda Ferguson also have had experience in launching a home-based business based on their own idea.

Less than three years ago, they started whipping up salsa recipes with the home-grown hot peppers from their garden and began to market the creations as Crazy Charlie's Salsa. Products of their Fishers-based company are carried in grocery stores, including Kroger and Fresh Market, and are coming soon to Marsh.

"Starting a business takes a lot of persistence and a lot of energy and a lot of legwork," Glenda Ferguson said. "You have to have a go-getter attitude."

"We're really excited to be included in Teresa's baskets because all the products are from Indiana. And as she grows, it will give us more exposure," Ferguson said.

Downham said the roots of Everything Indiana are Hoosier, even if a little roundabout.

She grew up in Fort Wayne, and husband Joe, who works at Hitachi in Plainfield, was a native of Logansport.

They met after college in the early 1980s, when both worked in a Campbell soup manufacturing facility in Ohio.

"I was in accounting and he was in purchasing, and after we were married in 1992, we were transferred to Campbell's headquarters in New Jersey," she said.

By 1997, they'd started having a family and moved back to Indiana to be closer to relatives. "We liked Fishers because it was like a big city but also still like a small town," she said.

"But we still had friends back in New Jersey who used to tease us about moving to Indiana and having nothing to do. They thought there's nothing here but cornfields. So, I'd make up baskets with chocolates and other things, and I'd include little notes with stories about how or where each thing was made and why it is significant."

By 2001, Downham wanted to stay home with their three small children but also looked for a home business that would be fun. The answer was in the baskets she'd sent as gifts.

"We spent a long time in research about things made in the state and took field trips," she said.

There were weekends that they sampled so much chocolate and hard Hoosier candies that they could explode.

Her mix now includes more than 25 makers and sources of items in Everything Indiana baskets.
 

Section: ZONE NORTH - FISHERS A.M.
Edition: FINAL EDITION
Page: R01