By Lisa Herrick
What do a Master’s educated social worker, a former technical designer for golf apparel, and a professional architect have in common? Would you guess a sportily attired professional who works in a state-of-the-art building and helps people improve their life? Guess again.
This just may be an impossible riddle to solve yet reveals how three talented, highly educated and ambitious women transformed their careers and education to launch their dream business in the Olympia area.
I don’t think any of these women originally aspired to be an entrepreneur. Yet each has discovered personal and professional success in their journey to become a small business owner. As I learned of each of their endeavors, I found myself in awe that they followed their passion, drew upon their talents, and let their commitment to family guide them. It takes guts, tenacity, and a vision to launch a new business.
I applaud Piper’s Playground, Blissfully Organic Co-op, and Cakeitecture for striving to offer unique services and products while doing something that is self-fulfilling, a professional accomplishment and making it work with the demands of family. Who are these women and how do they do it?
Meet Kim Bauer of Piper’s Playground. Kim is a native if Olympia with a Bachelors of Arts in Recreation Administration and Master’s in Social Work. After being away for awhile, Kim wanted to return to her roots with the goal of nurturing young families. The real impetus came from realizing a niche in the local market to service the 4-and-under crowd, combined with the reality of our climate (which just might be a euphemism for we have lots of rain here!).
Bauer envisioned creating a community amongst moms that offered an indoor play space. Kim and business partner Katie Manning consolidated their visions and opened Piper’s Playground just a mere 6 months ago, which has already become the buzz of the town as a premier indoor playspace. The heart of Piper’s is a 2,500 square foot play area. When you walk through the doors there is an immediate feeling of vibrancy, nurturing and fun. “We think of Piper’s as the ‘Nordstrom level brand’ of nurturing the family from birth to school age,” states Kim. Piper’s Playground and its various branches offer a setting where families can play, learn, party, stay fit and eat healthily.
“Piper’s offers well-crafted classes coming from a high-end educational stand point. We want to educate families and are able to provide this unique opportunity through our parent coach, French classes, creative cooking and healthy habits classes. We want to provide services to our community that cannot be found elsewhere,” Bauer adds.
Piper’s Playground offers an interesting array of enrichment classes, as well as a preschool and even an internationally recognized early childhood music and movement program called Music Together. Kim adds, “I am especially thrilled to offer the FIT4MOM program, previously Stroller Strides, to give moms a fitness opportunity geared to both pre- and post-natal stages but even throughout life stages as moms and grandmas of varying ages come to our fitness classes.”
Piper’s prides itself on quality and healthy choices, which extends to its local business partners. They serve Olympia Coffee Roasting in their espresso bar and delicious paninis from the All Fed Up food truck. Additionally, Piper’s Playground provides a space for pick up of organic food from Blissfully Organic Co-op, an important partnership that further extends Piper’s goals of supporting family’s healthy choices.
Now meet Jamie Simons founder of Blissfully Organic Co-op (BOCO). Reflecting back on the riddle, Jamie is the former technical designer from the golf apparel company. Jamie says, “After welcoming our second son, we decided it was important for me to be home more with our children. I sometimes laugh at what I am doing – selling fruits and vegetables since my degree is in Fashion Design. However, Blissfully Organic Co-op is something that I can run while still being home with my kids. In fact, my 3-year-old loves to help with ‘fruits & beggies’ (as he likes to call them). He can name just about every fruit and vegetable that comes in. And I love the fact that I can feed my family clean produce.”
Jamie enthusiastically admits that the inspiration to start Blissfully Organic Co-op came from a group of friends. She claims, “We wanted to eat organically but were struggling to find good quality for a good price. I heard the need, not only for my family but of those of my close friends.”
Jamie asserts that, “At BOCO, it is not about making money but rather providing our communities with the best produce for the best price. All of the products that we offer are from Pacific Northwest companies and we strongly believe in staying local. Above being ‘just a Co-op’, we believe in the organizations and people in our communities. We are teamed up with Homeless Backpacks, which provides fresh fruits to local homeless teens. We are partnered with a number of food banks and we have collected donations for a family who lost their home to a fire, a family going through their adoption process, and for a little boy who has an incredibly rare disease so he can get his treatment, and we don’t stop there.”
One of the best things about BOCO is they encourage you to buy whatever is best for your family whether that be once a month or once a week. BOCO not only offers produce, but also carries dry goods, eggs, local honey, bread, all of which is 100% certified organic.
Speaking of eggs and an interest in local and quality ingredients, meet Carie Tindill the remaining third of the riddle and formally educated architect. Carie is the owner and head designer of Cakeitecture Bakery.
Carie explains her journey from architect to sophisticated baker as likely starting in the kitchen as a child in her traditional southern family. Carie jokes, “In my family, once you were big enough to dress yourself, you were big enough to start cooking!” In recent years, Carie enjoyed baking out of her home for fun for family and friends. “It just turned out that I was really good at it!”, she says with an amusing laugh.
Carie moved to Olympia when her husband was hired by The Evergreen State College as a professor in sustainable design. In the midst of an economic downturn, Carie’s educational background of a Bachelor of Architecture and Masters of Construction did not result in furthering her professional career in architecture.
Carie began to experiment with the tools she used to make building models in Architecture School to design cakes. She soon realized that baking and decorating was a natural progression to feed her creative side and her expertise in architecture and construction. Combined with her husband’s encouragement and support to start her own business, Carie launched Cakeitecture Bakery.
Carie differentiates Cakeitecture Bakery from grocery store sheet cakes and the specialty cupcake shops by offering made from scratch and highly detailed and customized cakes, cake pops and cupcakes.
While most of us (ok, I confess…me) would assume that Carie’s biggest challenge would be designing and decorating elaborate cakes, such as a 60-pound Husky with a 3-foot cake board. Instead, Carie explains that the largest challenge has been locating a commercial size kitchen. She is currently renting a commercial kitchen but is now actively seeking a storefront in West Olympia.
Piper’s Playground’s Kim Bauer, BOCO’s Jamie Simons and Carie Tindill of Cakeitecture have each solved their own professional and personal riddle. Along the way, they offer Thurston County residents an amazing playspace for children, healthy and affordable organic food options, and incredibly creative and scrumptious cakes.
Learn more about each of these three female entrepreneurs.
Piper’s Playground
818 – 79th Ave, Unit A, Olympia
Blissfully Organic Co-op
http://www.blissfullyorganiccoop.com
https://www.facebook.com/BlissfullyOrganicCoOp
Cakeitecture Bakery
https://www.facebook.com/cakeitecturebakery
