Karen Tappin-Saunderson

Karen Tappin started her first business while she was still a student at UVA. As a freshman in college, she loved getting care packages in the mail from her mother, and saw a potential market. She started a business making care packages that parents could buy and have sent to their sons and daughters at college. “I figured it was better than getting a boring work-study job at the library!” she says. Never one to pursue things half-way, Karen made a brochure, got an 800 number, and became a member of a wholesaler market. She identified a target audience; people of upper middle class income who had children that had recently gone to college; and bought a mailing list. She laughingly described herself, walking around the UVA campus taking orders on her cell phone back in the days before cell phones were common. 

After college, Karen never let go of her zeal and passion for business, and continued to put together gourmet food gift baskets to sell on the side. Around holiday times, she would rent a cart at the mall and hire employees for the week to sell her baskets, which she found very profitable. One year, as she was preparing her stock for mother’s day, she did research on the top five items that people bought for their mothers for mothers day, and found that spa items were among the most popular gifts. To test this theory, she added a spa line to her products, and immediately, they were a hit. Karen had found her niche. 

Karen decided to start making her own beauty products with her husband, who, like Karen, is a history teacher, full time. They researched recipes and the therapeutic properties of different natural ingredients to develop a number of different scents and products, including lotions, soaps, salt scrubs, sugar scrubs, hair oil, hair cream, hair butter, body splash, hair milk, massage oil, candles and bath salts. They have been creative in coming up with unique scents, such as creamy cool mango, vanilla latte, sweet green tea, cucumber melon, and fig tea. All together, they have developed 13 products and 15 scents, including Karen’s Body Beautiful for Women and a men’s line called KBB for men.

Karen signed a lease on a storefront property for Karen’s Body Beautiful in November. The storefront is located in the Fort Greene/ Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn off of Myrtle Avenue. 
They wanted to install a kitchen at their storefront location to streamline the production process and increase their capacity. Unable to secure a loan through the traditional banking sector, Karen came to Project Enterprise. 

In April 2004 Karen took a $3,000 loan from Project Enterprise in order to build a kitchen in the storefront. In addition to the loan, Karen has also benefited from Project Enterprise’s Fast Track program, designed to provide additional business training and networking opportunities to business owners.
As an experienced businesswoman, Karen knew not to expect a profit in the first few months of operation, however, she was pleasantly surprised to make a small profit in her first month. Since then, she has developed a real clientele of customers that love her products and come back repeatedly, and she makes a point of developing relationships with these customers. “I don’t just want their money,” she tells me, “I want to talk to them and find out what they want.” Often, her students stop in to say hello.

Karen has since accessed two additional loans of $6,000 and $12,000 respectively. The first loan helped her to develop her website with e-commerce capabilities and implement a marketing strategy. The $12,000 loan enabled her to further refurbish her storefront to include spa treatment rooms so she could expand her services.

“There is nothing about this I don’t love,” Karen says, grinning. “Even if my income didn’t increase, I would still choose this.” She enjoys having control of her own time, loves interacting with people, and feels rewarded by the positive feedback that her customers give her. “Things have never been so in place. I wake up every day and I’m like ‘yes!’ This is what I was meant to do.”