Women's Work

Back in the not-so-good-old days of being a woman in the kitchen and the bath industry, Julie Koch, owner of Elegant Additions, in Houston, TX, was called upon to fix a malfunctioning set of door hardware.

"Everybody was upset. The installer said it was a piece of garbage. I go running over there," Koch recalls. "An older man greets me at the door, doesn't even say hello. I say, 'I'm here to look at the hardware.' He looks me up, looks me down, says, 'yeah.'

"The man points out the miscreant hardware with nary another word. I fix the lock, do exactly what I told him to do over the phone, put it back in the door. This entire time he's staring at me like he can't wait for this entire thing to fall apart," Koch recounts with a smile. "The door works perfectly, he stops and says, 'damn, I ain't never seen no one with fingernails like you fix the door hardware''"

Every female veteran of the kitchen and bath industry has a story like that. It's an instant trip down memory lane to an era when women fought for opportunities that are taken for granted today, when being the only woman in the meeting was the norm, and the unspoken question, "Can that lil' lady really handle herself in the field?" followed her everywhere she went.

This month, Kitchen & Bath Design News spoke with women who have managed to carve out brilliant, soaring careers during a time when most people still believed a woman's place was in the kitchen -- not in the kitchen design industry.

Here's how they did it, and what they learned in the process.

'Accidental' Designers
Today, a young woman planning a career in the kitchen and bath industry has a clear path to follow, with college courses in design, architecture and marketing as well as NKBA certification as her guideposts.

Back in the '80s, though, women got into the business mostly by accident, frequently as refugees from the teaching profession. Surprisingly, this actually proved to be an apt background.

"As a teacher, you had to learn to take charge of a classroom, otherwise they took charge of you," says Elaine Mikk, of Cabinet Discounters, in Columbia, MO.

"The kitchen and bath industry, it was easy! I always thought it was more difficult to try and sell [the concept of] learning to read to a child who'd always failed at it. Kitchen and bath [clients] wanted me to show them how their kitchen was going to be better. Their minds were open."

Stephanie Witt, CMKBD, owner of Kitchens by Stephanie, in Grand Rapids, MI, also started out as a schoolteacher, as did Mary Jo Peterson, CKD, CBD, CAPS, nationally renowned Universal Design expert, author, speaker and owner of Mary Jo Peterson Inc., in Brookfield, CT.

"I was looking for a job after I had moved far north in the state of Michigan, and there were no openings whatsoever," Witt recalls. "I saw an ad in the paper looking for a kitchen designer. I decided that being an art teacher, I could certainly design kitchens. I applied and got hired. You couldn't do that today." Witt worked at that company for two years before branching out on her own. "I was very underfunded and very na've, but I'm here, 20-some-odd years later, so I guess it worked," she quips.

Koch, on the other hand, was selling TV advertising for a show that featured builders and designers. A friend was expanding his family plumbing business and kept asking her for advice, so she ended up in a partnership with him. "He stayed for two years, then decided [the kitchen and bath industry] was way too stressful," she remembers. But Koch stuck with it, and turned it into a spectacularly successful enterprise.

The helping-out-a-buddy scenario also worked into the story of Martha Kerr, CMKBD, CR, v.p. of Neil Kelly Design/Build Remodeling, in Portland, OR. It seems her friend, coincidentally Neil Kelly's daughter, wanted to take off to Europe for three months and needed someone to fill in for her as receptionist at her dad's office. Kerr arrived as a temp and never left -- 35 years later, she's a top executive there, as well as a guiding light of the NKBA, having served as that organization's first female president in 1985.

For some women, their accidental entr'e into the business was a family affair. Mikk's brother had a cabinet business; her teenage kids had helped him with a project and thought it was fun. Before they knew it, Mikk and her husband had bought a truckload of leftover cabinets and "we sold in a crazy way, out of the house, in open lots," Mikk recalls. When this method started to get out of hand, they opened a warehouse and started focusing more on the specific needs of their clients. Thus, Cabinet Discounters was born, and has since grown to encompass six locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. In addition, Mikk has become a well-known personality for her vastly popular Home Innovations Radio Show, which first began broadcasting in 1996 and currently airs on WMAL Radio, the ABC-owned station in Washington, DC.

For Suzie Williford, v.p./sales at Westheimer Plumbing & Hardware, in Houston, TX, the family plumbing and hardware enterprise was purchased by her father for his sons and sons-in-law. Williford got roped into the deal somewhat reluctantly because, after all, someone needed to answer the phone.

Eighteen years later, she laughs, "the sons and son-in-laws are gone, and it's my father and myself." The business grew and focused more on decorative and commercial plumbing and hardware, surviving hard times -- both the failing Texas economy and Williford's father's serious injury on the job.

"He said, 'you have to take the bull by the horns and run this business,'" she remembers. Williford jumped in the deep end replete with profit and loss sheets, human resources and inventory control. "I immersed myself -- and I knew every facet of [the business] when that year was behind me," she recalls of her trial by fire.

"Most women have more presence than they realize," thinks Mikk. "In the beginning, you had to be a strong woman, not be intimidated, and I still believe that's the case."