{"id":23330,"date":"2014-11-17T16:41:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T21:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=23330"},"modified":"2021-04-23T17:07:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:07:25","slug":"deciding-wrong-lifestyle-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/deciding-wrong-lifestyle-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Deciding There\u2019s Nothing Wrong With a Lifestyle Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anne Dowling is not running a high-growth start-up. She doesn\u2019t live in a major metropolitan area. She\u2019s not chasing investors or working 80 hours a week. She raises her 7-year-old son and often skis or hikes in the morning.<\/p>\n

Dowling, a former competitive skier, is running a pair<\/a> of lifestyle businesses: Ridge Street Wine, a wine shop in Breckenridge, Colo., and a related store, Breckenridge Cheese and Chocolate, selling wine by the glass and a variety of artisanal cheeses and chocolate. Together, the shops bring in $400,000 a year in revenue, enough to support her family \u2014 her husband, Kenny, works there, too \u2014 while providing the freedom to do things she wants to do.<\/p>\n

Not that it\u2019s easy. \u201cRight now, I am stressed,\u201d she says. \u201cWe have to pay rent.\u201d Cash flow generally dips before her two big seasons \u2014 winter and summer \u2014 and uncooperative weather can keep tourists and local regulars away. \u201cWe have great snow this year,\u201d she says, \u201cso we\u2019re off to a better start than usual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dowling opened Ridge Street Wine in 2000, a few years after retiring from the skiing circuit. After her last competitive event at Lake Tahoe\u2019s Heavenly resort, she and some fellow skiers decided to take a trip to Napa Valley. \u201cI just fell in love with the lifestyle of wine,\u201d she says. She needed a job, and she found work in sales for a small distributor that represented boutique wineries around the world. \u201cThe learning curve was just exponential,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

After three years of selling, Dowling quit and took a ski trip to Chamonix, her favorite town in the French Alps, where a wine shop caught her eye. \u201cIt was like a one-room shop and there were stacks and stacks of wine,\u201d she says. And then she thought: \u201cBreckenridge could use something like this.\u201d After she returned home, the idea stayed in the back of her mind. When she blew out her knee skiing in March 2000, she decided to use the down time to write a business plan. By September, she had opened Ridge Street Wine.<\/p>\n

Dowling used $50,000 to open the business, borrowing against her home, which she had purchased with ski prize money. Within a year, she was making a profit, although not a big one. She used the knowledge she had gleaned as a wine distributor to \u201ceducate the locals about the wines, so they can take it home and they can tell that story at the dinner table.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her second year, the business suffered after the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, put a damper on tourism and travel. No longer were \u201cpeople driving in and loading up their Suburbans and then going to their ski homes,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In fact, the next few years were lean. To drum up interest, Dowling began hosting wine-tasting events at her home, as liquor laws prevented her from opening bottles in her shop. She invited customers to try wines paired with cheeses that she had shipped over-night from France. \u201cAnd everyone was like, \u2018Oh my gosh, these cheeses are extraordinary, you need to sell them,\u2019\u201d Dowling says. She listened to her customers, and began selling cheeses and also chocolate, putting up a divider in her wine shop so the food was technically sold in a separate space (to satisfy liquor laws) she called Breckenridge Cheese and Chocolate .<\/p>\n

In 2007, Dowling moved both businesses to her current space, got a new liquor license, and added an upstairs wine bar to the cheese and chocolate shop. Here profit margins are best on wine by the glass. \u201cWe started doing wines by the glass and cheese plates, so people could sit down after skiing,\u201d she says. The space also features live music on Wednesdays and Fridays. Expanding beyond the original retail shop and hiring two part-time employees has \u201creally helped the business go to a whole new level,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Dowling says she enjoys creating a \u201chome base\u201d for skiers, something she always searched for while skiing competitively. In the future, she says, she might consider expanding further by arranging ski and winery tours to Europe. But for now, she\u2019s content with the control and flexibility her small shops provide. \u201cLast year, I skied 50 days,\u201d she says. \u201cThis year, I am hoping to get more in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anne Dowling of Breckenridge, Colo., runs a pair of wine and cheese shops — and gets some good skiing in on powder days. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":27469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":false,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[187,3],"tags":[19446,20175,19733,19731],"class_list":["post-23330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-entrepreneur-videos","tag-food","tag-lifestyle-business","tag-wine-industry","tag-women-entrepreneurs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDeciding There\u2019s Nothing Wrong With a Lifestyle Business<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Anne Dowling of Breckenridge, Colo., runs a pair of wine and cheese shops -- and gets some good skiing in on powder days.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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