Whether it’s a basement beauty shop or an office in the den, home businesses have found their place in Naperville.
The city is benefiting from a national trend, as entrepreneurs flee the traditional strict corporate lifestyle, forced out the door by downsizing or just eager to strike out on their own. But it also is taking advantage of the move toward independence, marketing its assets and providing services for home-based capitalists.
As a result, the city ranked fourth in a list of the 50 best cities for home businesses in the December issue of Home Office Computing magazine.
“Basically, it tells you that we’re a user-friendly city for home-based businesses,” said Mike Skarr, executive director of the Naperville Chamber of Commerce. “In terms of demographics, we have all the things communities dream about to do good business. We have low crime, excellent education and a community that has pride in itself.”
Spurred by growth of the area’s home businesses, the Chamber of Commerce formed the Home-Based Business Network last year. It offers monthly seminars on topics ranging from how to market a business and make the most of the media to how to deal with change when your office is now in the basement or guest bedroom.
The chamber offers a health care plan often used by owners of home-based businesses, and a business services task force has been assigned to look at telephone and pager services, mail and document delivery and copying costs to see if there is a way to provide discounted services.
“We’ve learned that we need to expand our capacity to help the home-based businesses,” Skarr said. Recommendations to improve services and access for home-based entrepreneurs are scheduled to be given to the chamber board at the end of February, he said.
“We knew we were doing a lot of things already,” said Jenny Gates, program director for the Home-Based Business Network. “Last year, we drew together the home-based business folks and they told us there were a lot of things they needed because they’re wearing many hats.”
Naperville is endeavoring to help make those hats fit each home business owner.
“An advantage of being at home is the flexibility and the fact there are different things to do every day, but part of that is the bad side, too,” said Don Gingold, 37, who started his media design company in Naperville three years ago. “There are so many things to do, and you’re in charge of the whole thing. You have to find the work, do the work and then do all the billing. It’s quite a challenge.”
The city’s recognition of this was one of the main considerations in the magazine’s national ranking.
Criteria included: population of at least 100,000; population growth; entrepreneurship issues, including creating opportunity, age, wealth and education level; economic issues, such as industrial diversity; and infrastructure issues involving telecommunications and transportation availability.
In the rankings, Naperville trailed only Plano, Texas; Orlando; and Tucson. Aurora, the only other Illinois city to make the list, ranked 41st.
Naperville’s attraction also can be attributed in part to its lenient rules regarding home businesses, according to Skarr.
No licenses or permits for home-based businesses are required, and although zoning restrictions don’t allow retail sales from a home, a home-based entrepreneur can employ one person who doesn’t reside in the household.
In addition, the city does not require registration, so there is no accurate count of how many home-based businesses are in Naperville, Gates said. An estimated 160 home-based businesses, however, are members of the chamber.
Above all, however, Naperville has a population profile that lends itself to a home business.
“Naperville probably attracts businesses because it’s a very highly educated, professional community,” Gates said. “You have a lot of people who’ve been successful in the corporate world. With more professionals living here, there are more people who think they can make it on their own.”
Naperville’s demographics show that the median household income is $87,136, and its cost-of-living index is 4 percent above average.
According to Jeanne Buddingh, 42, a home-based business owner, “the climate is right” in Naperville. “We have a very supportive chamber that offers networking opportunities that really help combat that isolation factor you have with home-based businesses.”
That combined with easy Internet access and the numerous corporate headquarters that are potential clients give the city all the right elements, Buddingh said.
Going into business at home was something that Jeanne and David Buddingh had always talked about. The couple left their combined 35 years of corporate experience behind nearly three years ago to start Buddingh and Associates, a strategic marketing development company.
“There are a lot of advantages to having your own home-based business. You don’t get that steady paycheck you always get from corporate life, but you get to be your own boss,” Jeanne Buddingh said.
Downsizing was the reason Don Gingold decided to take the leap three years ago. Gingold, 37, was a marketing communications director until the software company he worked for was bought out. Now he and his wife, Katharine, are partners in Gnu Media Design, a communication consulting company.
According to Gingold, the biggest advantage is flexibility.
“It’s a 5-second commute, which is a nice thing. If at mid-afternoon my kids had a function at school, I could change my schedule. In the corporate world, they frown on that sort of thing. Now I may be working at 2 in the morning if that’s when I have the time,” he said.
