You Don’t Have To Be Young To Be An Entrepreneur
“Having recently celebrated her 60th birthday, Nemeth is a master at building a company from the ground up. Not just because she has built her latest company (Petlane) to more than $1 million in revenues in just three years, but because she has done it twice. Nemeth also founded Discovery Toys, which made more than $100 million in revenues before it was sold to Avon.
How Nemeth started both Discovery Toys and Petlane is strangely similar.
Both were started out of the home. Discovery Toys in Martinez and Petlane in Lafayette. And both revolved around an inability to find “just the right products.”
“With Discovery Toys, I was frustrated because as a parent I couldn’t find educational toys that I liked for my daughter,” Nemeth said.
Can’t resist a puppy
“The same thing happened with Petlane,” she added. “My daughter bought a puppy, and just as I did with her, I went to the store to buy some products and came back with nothing.”
Nemeth learned how to become a successful entrepreneur on the fly.
Petlane uses a direct-sales approach to reach customers. The company also sells its products on its Web site, Petlane.com, but the majority of its sales are conducted via “Pawtys” — similar to a Tupperware party hosted in people’s homes.
One of the things Nemeth likes about the direct-sales approach is that it gives people an opportunity to make a potentially unlimited income with no risk.
With Petlane, no one has become a millionaire, but she says about 10 made it to that level while selling for Discovery Toys during her tenure. A unique aspect of Petlane is that where the sellers of Discovery Toys were 100 percent women, this company has men working the Pawtys as well.”