Fred Pauloz, Deb Schiel and Jean Boelter are all amputees who have taken the leap into the exciting waters of small-business entrepreneurship. Interestingly, all three started their small businesses – Fred's Legs, A • Spaces and Amputeddy, Inc., respectively – for the same reason: They came up with a product that fulfilled their own need and then decided to pass it on to other amputees.
Fred's Legs
Fred Pauloz, 39, lost his right leg
21 years ago as a result of a jeep
accident.
For 15 years after his accident, Fred wore neoprene suspension sleeves over his prosthesis. These sleeves, he says, had a bland color, became dirty, tore easily, and didn't look very good after several months. “I just became so sick of looking at that,” says Fred, who is now a certified/licensed prosthetist.
“Maybe we should cover it,” Fred's wife, Joanne, said of his prosthesis one day in 1998, and the “light bulbs” instantly went on in their heads.
The two developed a prototype of a colorful sleeve to go over Fred's prosthesis, and Fred started wearing it in public. The response was shocking.
“For the first 15 years I was an amputee, people never made any kind of remarks, but once I started wearing this colorful sleeve, total strangers started stopping me every day!” Fred says. “They would say, ‘Hey, that's really cool; that looks really good.' It gave me such a high that I thought, ‘If I can help other people have the same feeling, this may be something special.'”
Fred says the colorful sleeves are a great way to “break the ice” with people who might not know how to act around an amputee.
This amazing response made the couple think about turning their sleeve covers into a business, and they started Fred's Legs in 1999 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, with a credit card. They decided to call their sleeve covers SleeveArt.
The two are happy with what the business is doing for others. “SleeveArt is available to almost all amputees for a minimal price and can help them feel much better about themselves,” Fred says. “People who were afraid to wear shorts because of what people would say are now, all of a sudden, going out in shorts and getting wonderful comments. It's certainly changing people's lives.”
A • Spaces
Deb Schiel, 45, became a left above-knee
amputee in 2000 as a result of cancer.
During her everyday life as an amputee,
she also discovered a problem that needed
to be addressed.
“I was always reminded of my amputation when I saw prosthetic parts lying around,” she says. “It bothered me, and I just thought there ought to be a way not to be reminded all the time. I didn't like having everything on public display, and I didn't like having to hop to the bathroom or another room to get some of my prosthetic pieces.”
She decided that a special cabinet to hold all of her prosthetic parts and supplies was the answer.
Though she had no cabinet-making background, she designed a cabinet to fit her needs. “I made it so that it would fit on either side of my bed, and I used it to see how I would function with it.” She also tried to imagine what amputees with different types of amputations might need and designed the cabinet to fit their needs as well.
Deb had a carpenter help her build the prototype. She then started A • Spaces in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in early 2004 and began selling her cabinets.
It's about wanting a normal environment, Deb says. If a person wouldn't want to leave his or her clothes lying all over the house, why would he or she want to leave prosthetic parts lying everywhere?
“It's also psychological,” she says. “My cabinet gave my privacy back to me. It gave me back my dignity.”
Amputeddy, Inc.
Jean Boelter was born with a blood tumor
on her foot that frequently became
infected. When it became badly infected
at age 5, however, she had to have her leg
amputated below the knee.
“One night when I was grown, my 12-yearold
niece, Katie Policani, was telling me
about everybody having teddy bears,” Jean
says, “and I said that I didn't have one. She
was stunned, and a couple of weeks later,
I got this little teddy bear from her in the
mail without a leg. It had a toilet paper
roll for a prosthesis, and she had cut some
blond hair off one of her dolls and had
sewn that to the head.”
Jean was delighted with the teddy bear and made a pattern for a similar amputee bear. Then, she and her mother made hundreds and gave them away as gifts.
After Jean's mother died in 2001, Jean wanted to do something for her on Mother's Day. “I made a teddy bear in her memory and gave it to my prosthetist,” Jean says. “He loved it, and he wanted some for some patients, so my sister and I and some friends started making them for him. And then we made them for friends and for friends of friends. We couldn't keep up with the orders so we just decided that we would invest in a business. We decided that if we didn't sell them, we would just give them away.”
Jean started Amputeddy in Seattle, Washington, and incorporated the business a little over a year ago.
The teddy bears, she says, are mostly bought as gifts. One was given to a little boy who lost his arm, Jean says. “The little guy hadn't been able to sleep alone at all until he got his teddy bear, but he hasn't been awake one night since.”
That alone makes the business worthwhile, she says.
Why Amputees Start Businesses
Amputees may decide to start a business for a variety of reasons. Some may want flexibility in their work hours. Others may want to ensure that they have a working environment that accommodates their disability. Some may have experienced discrimination in the workplace. And others may merely be looking for extra income.
Most will quickly learn, however, that there are both benefits and barriers to starting a business when you have a disability. The freedom of setting your own hours and not having to struggle with mobility problems to get to work, for example, are great benefits. Moreover, some entrepreneurs with disabilities who receive payments from Social Security or Supplemental Security may be able to increase their income and still keep these benefits as long as they stay within the programs' income and asset requirements. Obstacles to starting a business, on the other hand, include the following:
- Negative attitudes of the person with the disability or others
- Discrimination
- Problems obtaining capital
- Poor credit
- Lack of collateral
- Lack of knowledge about business
- The risk of losing money and time if the business fails
- Erratic income
- Possible loss of health insurance if they leave their regular job
- Inability to obtain bonding or insurance
- Lack of coordination among federal programs
- Possible loss of Social Security, Supplemental Security, healthcare or housing benefits.
Despite these barriers, people with disabilities are almost twice as likely as others to be self-employed – and they seem to be good at it. The Abilities Fund lists several traits of people with disabilities that may make them more likely to succeed in business. They include the ability to problemsolve, persistence, and the ability to adapt (See www.abilitiesfund.org/about_us/entrepreneurs_with_disabilities.php for more details).
Lessons Learned
Fred, Deb and Jean all learned valuable lessons while running their businesses. They wanted to share the following tips with other amputees who would like to start a business, especially one aimed at amputee consumers:
1. Be prepared to work for a year or more before you realize a profit.
2. Start with the Small Business Administration (SBA). None of these entrepreneurs took full advantage of the SBA, although Fred and Joanne did take some courses from the organization. In the beginning, Deb had no assistance, but in the last few months, she contacted them. “There's free funding, free attorney funding, and it's a free service,” she says, wishing she had contacted them earlier.
3. Make your business known to other amputees. “I'm more likely to buy from other amputees and to support them in what they are doing,” Jean says. Other amputees probably feel the same, she thinks.
4. Set up a Web site, and trade links with other Web sites.
5. Take advantage of the Amputee Coalition's Annual Educational Conference & Exposition and other conferences to make contacts and show your product.
6. Do direct marketing by sending information and samples to prosthetists and prosthetic manufacturing companies.
7. Advertise in the Technology Showcase in inMotion. “The Tech Showcase is the best place for an amputee to try to introduce a product because it's marketed to the amputee,” says Fred. “If you have a daily product or trick you use, why not share it with other people. It may be something that catches on and everybody else says, ‘Yeah, that can help me!'” Fred's Legs keeps advertising, Fred says, because “out of sight, out of mind.”
8. Talk to other amputees. It's interesting what you will learn from other amputees about what they have discovered about your product or their needs in the privacy of their own home, Fred says.
9. Don't forget to check into tax deductions for a home office.
10. Don't give up on an idea just because others think it's not a good idea. They might be wrong.
For more information:
Fred's Legs
www.fredslegs.com
954/646-1026
A • Spaces
www.a-spaces.com
414/550-5613
Amputeddy, Inc.
www.amputeddy.com
206/762-1955
Small Business Administration
800/U-ASK-SBA
Small Business and Self-Employment Service
http://janweb.icdi.wvu.edu/sbses
800/526-7234
The Abilities Fund
www.abilitiesfund.org/about_us/who_we_are.php
