Smallest business owners feeling optimistic in Morris
The smallest businesses in Morris County—those with fewer than five employees—say life is getting good again on the economic front.
"We've got lots of prospective clients through emails and phone calls," said Faith Zimmerman of Zimmerman Architects in Denville, which specializes in residential developments. "The number of people contacting us continues at a steady pace and is definitely higher than it was even four or five months ago."
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The projects are mostly additions or renovations, smaller than they were a few years ago.
"But they're still doing projects," she said, "and we are optimistic."
The 24-year-old firm has a staff of three—Zimmerman and her twin sister, Hope Zimmerman, both architects, and a secretary. From time to time, a freelancer is paid to help with measuring new properties.
That attitude is echoed in the Thumbtack Small Business Sentiment Survey of 344 small New Jersey businesses, conducted in April, which shows that 51 percent predict their company will do a little better in the next three months while 28 percent expect to do substantially better.
All in all, New Jersey small business owners rank 16th in the nation when it comes to a sunny outlook, according to Jon Lieber, chief economist for Thumbtack, a consumer service company that helps people find and hire experts, drawing from a network of 150,000 professionals, for projects of all types.
"Many of these business owners are often overlooked in other widely tracked business surveys," said Lieber, adding that Thumbtack will issue the sentiment survey monthly. "We hope to offer a better understanding into what's happening in this critical segment of the nation's workforce."
These small businesses are indeed crucial. In 2013, a total of 58 percent of the 230,000 New Jersey businesses with paid employees had fewer than five employees, according to the U.S. Economic Census. Additionally, there were 630,000 businesses with no paid employees—so-called solopreneurs.
Though ubiquitous, these businesses, because of their size, can thrive or suffer because of even one factor, which varies from industry to industry.
In the case of Zimmerman Architects, one such factor is banks' willingness to issue loans.
"When banks are lending, people can do home projects," Faith Zimmerman said. "Most of our clients need financing to do a project because it's big enough that they don't just have the money in the bank for it. For a while, the banks weren't giving anybody anything. When that happens, our whole industry really slows down."
When both commercial and residential work decrease, things get really tough, she explained, because architects who typically do only commercial work start taking on available residential projects.
"So we wind up competing with them," Zimmerman said, "and, typically, they aren't our competitors."
Price of chocolate
Steve Jones owns the Black River Candy Shoppe in downtown Chester, which offers more than 900 kinds of candies and employs its proprietor, one other full-timer, and a part-timer. For him, the factor affecting his life now is the price of chocolate. Cocoa prices have risen in the last two years, according to media reports.
"If I get a 10 percent increase," Jones said, "I hate to do it but I'm forced to raise our prices accordingly."
His strategy as a small business owner is to be a specialty store that offers candies not easily found elsewhere.
"The big boxes are not my competition. I try to stay away from what I can find at Walmart or Target or ShopRite," he said. "They can charge cheaper prices because they buy in such quantity. I don't like to have products that people will recognize as being available for so much less somewhere else."
A miserable winter kept customers away, but the Black River Candy Shoppe, in all its uniqueness, came back with a strong Easter, which has Jones feeling uplifted. He believes in his kind of candy business.
"They say candy and booze are recession proof," he said. "In good times and bad times, you need some comfort food. We've gone through some economic downticks and our business, especially when we were younger, grew. We're always affected in some way but not as much as some other small ma-and-pa tchotchke shops in town or other stores."
At the North Jersey Center for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in Madison, the staff of two—Henry McCann and his business partner, Candace Sarges, both acupuncturists—is also upbeat.
Though acupuncture is still relatively new to Western civilization, many people have accepted and integrated it into their health care regimen, according to McCann. Yet, there's still plenty of room for growth.
"Conventional medicine is fantastic, but everything has its limitations," he said. "One of the nice things is that the sort of things we do are not going to be outsourced, so I don't feel like I have a job security issue that maybe some sectors of the economy do have."
While business is just fine, he said, the challenges he and Sarges face are the same ones they've always had.
"There's no Medicaid reimbursement," McCann explained. "The basic affordable health care plans that were chosen for New Jersey don't include acupuncture as part of the covered services."
Vigilance needed
Laurie Ehlbeck is the New Jersey director for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the state's largest small business advocacy organization with a statewide membership of 10,000 businesses, including 500 in Morris.
"Most of our members do have fewer than 10 employees and a lot have fewer than five, so the results of the Thumbtack survey apply to our membership," she said. "We do surveys of our own, which show there's been an uptick in optimism lately, too, which is a good thing."
But vigilance is required, according to Ehlbeck.
"The problem is, every time things are starting to look up, a legislator will put in a bill that will be harmful to small business and discourage business owners," she said. "We're always working on trying to protect against such legislation."
Currently, she pointed out, nine New Jersey municipalities—East Orange, Irvington, Jersey City, Montclair, Newark, Passaic, Paterson, Trenton, and, as of June 30, Bloomfield—have passed sick leave ordinances requiring employers to offer sick days to their employees.
"There is speculation that other, more affluent areas, including Princeton, are considering similar ordinances," Ehlback said. "There's also state sick leave legislation that we could see before the end of this session as well.
"What business owners tell me is that if they're required to give more than they can afford," she said, "they're going to have to take away vacation time or give employees fewer hours or have fewer employees."
Also of concern to the NFIB is a proposed millionaire's tax that, in an attempt to balance the state budget, would raise the rate on income over $1 million from the current 8.97 percent to 10.75 percent, for four years. While that doesn't sound like a problem for small businesses, according to Ehlback, it is.
"In Morris County, there's a lot of farmland," she said. "Farms are worth a lot of money and it's easy to get over that million-dollar income level without actually being a millionaire. Just because you're bringing in a million dollars doesn't mean you're going out to buy yourself a Ferrari."
Lastly, the NFIB has its eyes on a precedent set last November when, Politico reported, San Francisco became the first jurisdiction in the nation to require some retail chains that employ at least 20 people in the city to give their workers two weeks' notice before changing their work schedules. Now some states are following the lead.
Last week, Ehlback said, such legislation was introduced in New Jersey. If passed, she said, small businesses could be adversely impacted.
Good times roll
But, for now, very small business owners are enjoying good times. In Morristown, Denise Wennogle, who is a family lawyer and, for the past two-and-a-half years, a solo practitioner, feels optimistic.
"I've only been a business owner for a little while," she said, "but I've been doing really well and I'm keeping busy and clients are coming. The divorce business is not ever going away."
She believes in her particular place in the divorce world, too—collaborative divorce, a cooperative, less expensive process that takes place out of court.
"I have a little niche, so I feel really confident because I truly believe that people are going to be changing the way they get divorced in the future," Wennogle said. "I think I'm cutting edge."
As long as the economy keeps going well, she added, people will feel more confident about getting a divorce, too. In lean times, some people who want to be divorced will stay married.
Keeping an edge is essential to the success of a small business, according to Cheryl Bonini Ellis of the Madison-based Ellis Business Enterprises.
A solopreneur for 10 years, Ellis helps businesses of all sizes improve their leadership skills by training, conducting workshops, and facilitating leadership retreats. Her new book, "Becoming Deliberate: Changing the Game of Leadership from the Inside Out" (Morgan James Publishing) was released this week.
"I'm optimistic about the future of business," she said. "We're at a really great time for owning a business, especially a small business, because the barriers to entry have disappeared."
The businesses that do best, she said, are the ones that continually invest in money but especially in learning. They keep current and on top of new technologies. With the technology comes challenges, she said, but also opportunity.
"These days, if you're not learning all the time," Ellis said, "you're actually falling behind."
The goal of very small businesses is not necessarily to grow. Being small makes some business owners feel fulfilled, they say, because it allows them to focus on their fields, enjoy their clients, and have hands-on experiences.
To Faith Zimmerman, growth would mean doing less of what she loves.
"If we get bigger," she said, "we wind up doing more administrative work, and that's not really what we want to be doing."
Lorraine Ash: 973-428-6660; lash@gannettnj.com
Learn more
•Black River Candy Shoppe, Chester, www.blackrivercandyshoppe.com
•Ellis Business Enterprises, Madison, www.ellisbusinessenterprises.com
•National Federation of Independent Business, Trenton, www.nfib.com/new-jersey/contact-nfib
•North Jersey Center for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Madison, www.newjerseyacupuncture.com
•Wennogle Law, Morristown, www.wennoglelaw.com
•Zimmerman Architects, Denville, www.ZimArch.com