Emily Church’s story is the kind that makes university presidents and bankers nervous. At the age of 19, with $500 in cash, a high school diploma and no borrowed capital, she started an online kitchen supply site from her dining room table.
In the next 12 years, Everything Kitchens LLC has become a $20 million global Internet retail supplier of nearly 10,000 unique items for chefs of both professional and amateur status. The Springfield-based operations have expanded and moved three times since outgrowing Church’s home office, and long gone are the days of drop-shipping single orders via third-party wholesalers. The current headquarters, 1920 W. Woodland St., includes warehouse space that allows for the overstocking of the most popular items for faster order turnaround.
One such item is the Kitchenaid stand mixer, which Church claims as a major niche with her customer base. The company sells 15,000 of the high-end decorator appliances each year, about half of which are nonstandard specialty colors, not stocked by most e-commerce merchants.
Church says her youthful tenacity has served her well as she’s built the business, though it presented a challenge in the beginning.
“I would engage in business transactions almost entirely over the phone, so as not to be judged by my youth,” says Church, the oldest of nine siblings. “The person on the phone could only judge me by what I actually did.”
These days, the results speak for themselves. From a first-year profit of $100,000 to $16.6 million in sales in 2013, Everything Kitchens has posted near-perfect profitability, including an average of 20 percent annual growth, and 45 percent since 2012. All of which, Church points out, has happened without any of the traditional business loans or private investor support.
While only 3 to 4 percent of total annual sales originate in Springfield, Church insists on keeping as much money as possible in the local economy. With nearly 30 regular and seasonal employees and a 3-year-old retail location in the Brentwood Center, Everything Kitchens strives to keep its growth close to home, including $300,000 in locally contracted website upgrades last year.
The benefits of Everything Kitchens are not limited to the Ozarks, however. Through its profits, Church allocates financial support to a variety of global relief efforts, including well-digging projects, feed-a-child sponsorships and monthly operating funds that sustain Grace Village, a Haitian orphanage.
Church says the secret to her success was allowing her younger self the same latitude as any other 19-year-old on their first real job.
“I just tried to give myself a little self-forgiveness and room for errors and kept trying hard and working hard,” she says. “I’m not the type that gives up.”
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