The journey home once more

Amanda Teter's empire of stores, which sell gently-used clothing, accessories and other goods, are doing well in the pandemic-weakened economy. With more people jobless or insecure about their finances, many have been seeking the lower prices at Once Upon A Child, Plato's Closet and Style Encore, all on Tiffin Avenue. You want economic stimulus? Teter's stores together put $1.1 million cash into the pockets of area residents last year in buying their items for resale. Her stores always have an abundance of inventory straight from the closets of community members. "You would be amazed at the amount of things that people have," Teter said. Last November, she launched a fourth store: Home Once More, which offers furniture, décor, appliances and other household items. Getting started It could be an intoxicating rise for a woman who once went to college for dietetics but noticed she really liked and excelled at her business courses. But not so with Teter, who is rock-solid grounded in family, faith and frugality. Her foundation was further tempered through tough going when she opened her first store, Once Upon A Child, 14 years ago. There was a cash crunch. Teter thought the challenge would be getting enough goods to sell. Instead, she was buried in a flood of clothing, accessories, equipment and furniture for babies and children. "We had dressing rooms filled with clothes that needed tagged. I was taking carloads of stuff to my house. I had my living room filled with bins of items that needed tagged. We were just trying to keep up. It was so overwhelming," she said. "I didn't have the staff to keep up. I had full staff, but we could just not keep up." That wasn't the half of it. All the purchasing for inventory drained much more cash than was flowing into the newborn business. "The quantity of stuff we were getting in was putting a huge strain on us financially," Teter said. "We were just new. So our sales were just starting to build." She navigated that financial strait. Shortly thereafter, the Great Recession hit, and large numbers of financially strapped families shopped at Once Upon A Child. She reflected that 2008 "was one of our franchise's best years to date." But 2009 brought a divorce. "I kind of had to restart a lot of my life," Teter said. "Became a single mom." At the time, her four children were ages 5 to 12. "I was basically raising my kids myself and trying to figure out this new business which was very overwhelming at the beginning," she said. She had dreamt of adding more stores, but that dream had to be put on hold. "It took me a while to wrap my arms around all of the new things in my life and trying to just figure out the business," Teter said. "There would be months where you were cash flow negative, even though you had done a decent amount of sales that month." "That was the time, probably back then, that I was (saying), 'I don't know if I can do this,'" she said. She got through it all with the help of her family, particularly her mother, Becky Stearns. "She has helped me raise my kids, especially when I was a single parent. She sacrificed her time to help me out if I needed somebody, if I had to run in (to the business) or whatever," Teter said. "Then she came to work for me, too. She's pretty much been working for me from the beginning." Teter's faith made a huge difference. "I'm a Christian, so I have had to rely on God to help me figure out how to run these businesses because, honestly, I was totally overwhelmed when I started and especially when I got divorced, didn't know what I was going to do," she said. Jesus "has really helped me figure out how to be a business owner and given me a lot of guidance when I didn't know what to do." While she was going through the divorce, she learned about Dave Ramsey, a personal finance advisor, evangelical Christian, author and businessman, and she took his classes on money management. "I had to have some kind of game plan, financially. When I was starting out, basically I had nothing after my divorce to go with. I knew I had to have a vision, and I had to have a plan," Teter said. "By learning Dave Ramsey and doing his classes, I really figured how to do my money, how to live on a lot less, which is kind of the whole premise of what I believe in so much with my business, is saving money and reusing and recycling, and I basically lived all that." In 2013, she added her second store, Plato's Closet, which offers clothing, carry apparel, shoes, jewelry, accessories and other items for teens. In 2016, Teter added her third store, Style Encore, which sells women's clothing, handbags, jewelry and accessories. 'Our own creation' For years, Teter had wanted to add a store selling furniture, décor and other home products. But Winmark Corp., of Minneapolis, which had granted her franchises for her other three stores, had no home store franchises and did not seem likely to offer any in the near future. With no franchises available, no pre-made design plans to help her, Teter had no plans for a home store — only a wistful dream. Then last September, she was shopping at the former Pier 1 store's going-out-of-business sale. "I started looking around and (said) 'You know what: this is, like, the perfect setup. They already have all the shelves, all the displays, everything we would need to do a home store,'" Teter recalled thinking. "That was part of the challenge. … Our other stores, the franchise, they give us a design plan that has all of the designs. They tell us how to set the store up. We ordered all of our stuff from them. So we don't have to worry about that part of starting a business." "For the home store, that would have been part of our challenge. How do we set this thing up? Where do we find racks? How do we display things?" she said. "It just all made sense that it was all in there and it was already home goods." So Teter, who had remarried in 2017, launched Home Once More in the former Pier 1 space last November with her husband Jason. It was a kind of third wedding anniversary celebration for the couple. Amanda said they are not having babies anymore, but Home Once More is their business baby. "It's just our own creation," she said. They did not have a franchise template or infrastructure to assist them. But Teter was able to apply most of the principles she practiced at her other stores to Home Once More. She had not run a home goods store before, so there were other things to figure out. But overall, it has been a smooth transition. Home Once More fits in with Teter's other stores and her way of life. "My whole concept of my stores — which I believe in so much — is shopping smart and being environmentally smart, so reusing things, taking care of your stuff so you can reuse them," she said. "It helps you save a lot of money when you use things that have been recycled. I've lived that. That's what my life is."