In 2002, Emily Church used a spare bedroom in her house to launch a company focused on the kitchen.
With $500, she started Everything Kitchens LLC as a Web-based kitchen supply company that has since grown to encompass a work force of 19 employees, a 13,000-square-foot warehouse and a 3,000-square-foot retail store which opened in late 2011 in the Brentwood Center on Glenstone Avenue.
As for what led her to start her company, Church points to her role helping to care for her younger siblings and watching her parents’ entrepreneurial efforts.
“I got interested in starting a small business because my parents had a home business that sold health products,” Church says. “I got the idea of how to do a small business with low cash levels from them.”
Using its warehouse space to house its products, Church and her employees work to offer a wider range of kitchenware than customers might find at retail competitors such as Wal-Mart and Target, she says. Products include grain mills, juicers, cappuccino machines, panini grills, cutlery, yogurt makers, cookware, flatware and wine racks from brand names such as Breville, Cuisinart, Margaritaville and Vitamix, according to
EverythingKitchens.com.
The company’s revenues have grown nearly every year since its inception, and Church says the only year they decreased was in 2011, dropping to $10.9 million, from nearly $11.4 million in 2010.
“We’re projected to do about $13 million this year, and 95 percent of that comes from outside of Missouri,” she says.
While the majority of customers are out-of-state, the jobs their purchases fund are not.
“We bring in business from all over the country, like from New York and California and … the money is going to local workers,” Church says.
The company also gives back in other ways, locally and abroad. Among recent local community projects, employees helped build a garden for Victory Mission. A portion of Everything Kitchen’s profits is also donated to World Vision, a Christian organization that works to fight poverty around the globe. Church’s employees can make donations through an employee-matching plan, and customers can donate during the checkout process online. The company also gives financial support to Grace Village Orphanage in Haiti through
HealingHaiti.org.
There have, of course, been challenges along the way. When Google changed its search algorithm last year, her company’s site ranking dropped nearly 40 percent, and Church says she and her team worked for eight months to get site traffic and sales levels back to normal.
There’s also the challenge of maintaining pricing levels that satisfy manufacturers and customers and allow the company to make a profit.
“One of the biggest things we’ve had to overcome is price wars on the Internet. People can just go to one of these sites and sort by price, 50 different stores with one click,” Church says. “It’s changed the market so much that people online end up selling things dollars above cost.”
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