Career comes out of layoff
By EVAN BEVINS, Special to The News and SentinelMARIETTA - In an uncertain economy, with double-digit unemployment hitting Washington County for the first time in more than 15 years, some residents are taking their careers into their own hands.
About a year-and-a-half ago, Stanleyville resident Robert Miller started making pens and pencils using a lathe and materials such as wood, acrylic and deer antlers.
When he was laid off in February after more than seven years with a local heating and cooling firm, Miller, 38, started thinking about his craft as more than a hobby.
"I just took it to the next level," he said.
Miller was one of nine participants in a recent entrepreneurial training course through the local Small Business Development Center.
Miller and seven of his classmates applied for Workforce Investment Act capitalization funding, and all eight received $5,000 to help execute the business plans the training helped them develop.
With the money he received, Miller purchased new equipment and is now working with his father to nearly double the size of the small building where he does his work.
He also plans to use some of the funding to beef up his Web site, www.pensbyrob.com .
Miller was thinking about going back to school when he heard someone at Community Action talk about the Small Business Development Center program.
With rising unemployment rates and more and more layoffs being announced, Miller liked the idea of starting his own business instead of looking for work in an increasingly crowded and uncertain job market.
"With everyone getting laid off, you didn't know what was going to happen," Miller said.
Miller brings his pens and pencils to the River City Farmers Market and also participates in festivals around the region.
He said he's gotten some questions about his decision to produce items that aren't exactly necessities in a time when people are cutting back, but he is confident in his work and his market.
"If you get the right people and you make what they want, they're going to pay you," Miller said.
Losing her production job at Eramet in March led Lynn Wiblin, 45, to hit the fast forward button on an idea she'd been saving for later - opening her own greenhouse and plant business.
"I was interested in doing that, actually, as a retirement project, probably 20 years down the road," she said.
Wiblin said she wasn't having much luck in her job search, so, when she learned about the training and funding through the Small Business Development Center, she began looking in a different direction.
Now Wiblin has started Growing Traditions on her farm about five miles outside Belpre.
She used some of the funding for a drip irrigation system to nourish the 1,680 mums she's growing for this fall. She also grows tomatoes, peppers, garlic and beans.
Wiblin's plan is to wholesale some of her products to landscapers and sell some of them retail at the Farmers Market.
Wiblin has always enjoyed gardening and has helped out from time to time on friends' farms.
But it's a little different to be running her own business.
"There's a lot of detail work in it, a lot of hard work," she said.
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cabaka
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07-26-09 11:10 AM
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Initiative will set you free! …….Referendum and recall wouldn’t hurt either.
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