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December 24, 2007

Show time | A chat with Stacey Koloski, co-founder of Stages Academy in Scarborough.

Founded: June 2007
Startup costs: $10,000-$11,000
Employees: Koloski, business partner Hollye Seddon and 5-10 part-time instructors
Projected revenue, year one: $120,000
Projected revenue, year two: $175,000
Contact: 510-6050
183 U.S. Rte. One, Ste. C, Scarborough 04074
www.stagesacademy.com

Tell me a little bit about what you do.
Stages Academy provides movement, music and theater education for kids pre-school through high school. We're not recital or performance-based. Our goal is for kids to have fun. I think that's what sets us apart from other studios in the area. For the older kids, we have a few contracts where we go into schools and replace their drama department, so we are directing plays for them. The goal being that we can help them pick up where school budgets [leave off].

Where did you get the idea for Stages?
We both had other careers. Hollye was teaching [culinary arts] at Bath Regional Vocational Center. I was in my 12th year of [telecommuting as a consultant] for a fundraising and marketing consulting firm in Boston. And my children go to the Little Dolphin School. When they were building this marketplace [for Little Dolphin's new location], Steve Brier of the Little Dolphin School invited [parents] to take a tour.

Steve was showing us the empty suites here and he said, "I wish I could find some tenants that would be family-oriented so that all our kids could come to the school and then take dance or karate." And he said, "I've called the Children's Theatre of Maine, I've called the Fiddlehead Center for the Arts, and those people aren't interested in relocating, and I would love to find somebody that was interested in starting a business."

Hollye and I were both on the tour at that time. I said, "I've been dying to get out of my career, this is what I went to school for, I'd really like to do it." I saw Hollye in the parking lot and said, "Hollye, what do you think about this crazy idea?" And she said, "That sounds great." We had six weeks to put the business plan together and open.

Would you have preferred to have more time?
I actually think it benefited us. We have a lot of big ideas, and had we had more time to think about them, we may not be sitting here. In fact, Hollye and I had talked about opening a business for two years.

What's been the most effective way to market Stages?
We made a conscious decision [to] direct a very significant portion of our resources to advertising. And it hurts. It's very expensive to advertise in print. But I have to tell you that after three months of that, people knew who we were. The fact that we're in newspapers, that our advertising looks nice, that it's big, it helps us. [It makes some people think,] "Oh this place looks very professional." But on the other side, it makes some people think, "Oh, they're a franchise. They obviously have a lot of money." So we've had to balance that.

What's surprised you the most about the start-up process?
The most challenging piece has been the fact that Hollye and I are women. There [were] quite a few moments where we felt like we were not being taken seriously. We had to change a lot of our vendors early on. We changed banks, we changed lawyers. What I would say to anyone else, especially a woman, wanting to start a business [is] to interview a lot of people first. Had we had more time, we would have interviewed more people.

You've worked in nonprofits before. What led you to make Stages a business?
The first thing that we thought of was the time. We didn't have time to go through the nonprofit hoops. We have a great appreciation for nonprofit organizations, but we wanted to be able to do our own thing, and not be beholden to a board of directors. We also had big goals for Stages from the beginning. We want to be able to franchise, we want to be able to expand outside of Maine as early as 2008. It comes down to charting our own course and being able to be flexible and adaptable.

Interview by Kerry Elson

New Entrepreneurs profiles young businesses, 6-18 months old. Send your suggestions and contact information to editorial@mainebiz.biz.

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