Most entrepreneurs are lucky to have just one epiphany when constructing an enterprise.
Barbara Kavovit had three: her first clients; her divorce and an episode of “Sex and The City” when Samantha buys her own apartment.
Now the once bankrupt businesswoman is on the cusp of rebranding herself in the world of home improvement.
Through Barbara”™s Way, Kavovit turned adversity into opportunity.
After graduating from SUNY Oswego with a degree in finance and economics, she returned to her family”™s New Rochelle home. It was in 1991 when she found her true knack for home repairs when launching company Stand-Ins Corp.
“I would hear my mom and her friends complain that their husbands didn”™t do anything around the house,” Kavovit said. “I came up with this idea that women shouldn”™t have to rely on their husbands and they should be able to do basic home repairs themselves.”
The budding entrepreneur would stand outside of the Golden Horseshoe Shopping Center in Scarsdale to approach women who exited the Gristede”™s grocery store.
“I would go up to them just like a politician, introduce myself and say, ”˜I started a small home repair business and is there anything you need done in your house?”™” she said. “And, believe it or not, they started calling.”
Queries ranged from leaky faucets to cracks in the driveway as Kavovit leafed through local publications for carpenters, electricians and tile men to contract with.
“I was all of 22 or 23 at the time, wore a tool belt and it was really an empowering feeling,” she said. “I would say about a year into it, I wrote a letter to IBM. I told them that with such a large corporate headquarters, there were probably a lot of contractors who didn”™t want to deal with the small stuff. I said, ”˜I don”™t sweat the small stuff. Let me come up for a meeting.”™”
Kavovit subsequently snagged a two-year contract for small, minor repairs at the corporate headquarters.
Through due diligence, her contract was extended to a Purchase facility where MasterCard is today.
Her project portfolio began to grow as Kavovit contracted a multimillion-dollar Riva Pointe Project in Weehawken, N.J., and managed construction of a Micro Bio-Medics facility in Pelham and Absolute Coatings in New Rochelle.
What women want
Having grown her home repair and now commercial construction management company, Kavovit moved in 1995 to New York City and founded Anchor Construction Inc.
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Her sights were set on big projects; one of the first projects she managed under the Anchor title was the “Carnegie Hall Towers project with Tishman (Construction Corp.) and Polshek (Partnership Architects),” Kavovit said.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001.
“At that point, I had been going through a divorce, had a young child and had to think of a way to earn a living and reinvent myself,” she said. “I realized the only way to do that was to create the perfect toolkit and that was creating a brand called Barbara K Enterprises.”
Kavovit met with manufacturers overseas and “kind of married the tools you would need with each home repair or improvement you were doing.”
When designing a Barbara K toolkit, functionality and visual appeal were key.
Each kit came equipped with a set of simple instructions.
“It had to look good enough to put it on your kitchen countertop, but sleek enough to stick in your kitchen drawer,” she said. “I realized that”™s what women want.”
Barbara”™s Way
Kavovit”™s growing product line trickled to the windows of Bloomingdale”™s and home center stores; she put out a television show called “Savvy” on the WE network and was piloted for another on E!
Still, she found herself struggling to raise money and “I guess we never found the critical mass that we probably needed to.”
Bankruptcy resulted in 2008 after tangles with an “adversarial investor.”
“Even though I filed bankruptcy, I still believed in my heart of hearts that the next time, I would succeed,” she said. “I just felt like I didn”™t have the formula right.”
Kavovit teamed up with former head of Penthouse International David Myerson to pick up where she left off.
Barbara”™s Way was soon born.
“After all this time, I had become an expert not only in construction, but how to market products to women,” she said. “I tried to be a manufacturer and a brand, but even Martha Stewart doesn”™t manufacture her own products. She licenses everything.”
In addition to designing eye-catching pink gardening gloves for Isotoner, she has also secured licensing deals with Stanley Tool Co., Hunter Fan Co. and Masco Corp. for products like drain cleaning kits and toilet repair kits.
The gloves will be sold for retail March 1 at Home Depot online, Walmart, Macy”™s and Amazon.com; prices range from $14.99 to $19.99.
“The No. 1 goal for me this year is to sign on more licenses and to have a show on the air,” she said. “If you do business like it”™s your last day ”¦ like time is running out, it gives me the motivation to succeed.”
