Interview With Nina Frye & Cindi Schmitzer, Co-Founders of LTDChix

This summer, I got to talk with two super-cool chicks who have launched their own clothing line, LTDChix, which stands for "Living the Dream." These ladies are near and dear to my heart because not only are they Jersey girls, but they’re based out of the town where I worked summers during college as co-manager of a now-defunct ice cream parlor: Sparta, New Jersey. Cindi Schmitzer, 44, is a former CPA and a mom of 4, and Nina Frye, 45, is a former Fortune 100 account executive and mom of 3.

Kristen, Biz Chicks Rule: Tell me about LTDChix and your line of tees.

Cindi Schmitzer: We had the idea and we really kicked that around for a few months, and then we went to a local free seminar for start your own business held by SCORE. We started to set up meetings with them, myself and Nina and two gentlemen from SCORE. We really sort of kicked it around for another 6 months, how exactly we were going to go about launching it. And one meeting we said we really just need to kick it up and print up the shirts…

It was like, we’ve been talking about this for so long and if we’re going to do it we need to just go for it. There was a small festival coming up — Sparta Days — and we thought it would be a good way to reach our market really easily. We called the Sparta Independent and said this is what we’re doing. There was an article prior to Sparta Days and we had struck such a chord with people like chasing us down and saying like, "That is my life!" We had a booth [at the festival].

Nina Frye: We launched in June 2006.

When you were BFFs "down the shore"on vacation together with your families in 2005 and had the idea for LTDChix, did you ever dream that your business would be where it is now?

Nina Frye: We’d been out of the work force — at least I had — for 18 years, and we did kind of wing it. We thought, okay, if this didn’t work it would be like a hobby and at least we could have a little money and go on a little trip or something.

We realized we really have to follow through with. We kept meeting with SCORE. They were a really big help and they drew a path for us with insurance and all the stuff you have to do initially.

Both of you have great business experience, but neither were entrepreneurs. What were your biggest challenges?

Cindi Schmitzer: Neither of us had entrepreneurial experience. Initially, it was a little backwards from the traditional way that I think most entrepreneurs do launch their businesses. We sort of went out there without a business plan and a real game plan. Then we had to sort of step back and come up with a better game plan than we had, which was actually nothing.

It’s a very steep learning curve is what I will say. We made some mistakes long the way, learned from the mistakes, kind of adjusted and went on. There’s a lot of unanticipated things that come up, and you have to kind of just make a judgment call and it may not be the right judgment call and it isn’t the right judgment call. You just kind of just have to learn from it and move on.

Nina Frye: It seems like we’re always saying, "It’s a lesson learned — times three," but nothing major, nothing that we were stopped in our tracks and didn’t know how to handle it.

Cindi Schmitzer: A lot of our relationships with our customers and stores, mainly the different stores we sell to. Sometimes we make a judgment call like we’ll allow them to do this or do that and then we’re sorry we allowed something and we have to draw a harder line.

Nina Frye: Some of the stores we’ve opened are word of mouth, like customers have e-mailed me and said they’d rather have a store in their down than order online. And then I’ll call the store. Sometimes it’s great and it falls in your lap, and sometimes you have to do the work yourself. Trade shows also.

You’ve gotten media coverage as far away as Australia. What are you doing to market your business?

Nina Frye: The website is what really got us out there. The blogs are huge. We got free press nationally… We really didn’t think we were going to be in this business this long. But we’re still alive and out website continues to gain exposure. A licensing company has approached us about taking our designs internationally.

One lady contacted us about distributing the shirts there, so we actually have a distributor in Australia. So she set up a website and is selling our shirts there.

How did you decide on your first design?

Cindi Schmitzer: It was actually very, very easy . We thought what are the things that we hear our compatriots complaining about and what are the things that was just he bane of our existence is laundry. It’s NEVER ENDING. It’s never done, it just takes a lot of time to get our family in clean clothes.

[Plus] shooting here and there, taking these kids to just every games, practices, lessons, classes, just how many other moms are in the same situation that we just crisscross paths with all over the roads of Sparta.

How many designs do you have now?

Nina Frye: There’s a total of 12 designs, and the note cards are one picture per card.

Is it true that you’re starting a new line of shirts for dads? Do tell.

Cindi Schmitzer: It’s something that we thought of from the beginning, like how many different places you really could take this concept. SO we just thought, well, we’ll do this sort of tongue-in-cheek, ha-ha, how-did-we-get-here sort of thing could certainly translate to dads easily. Some sort of traditional male household chores, we could certainly come up with a bunch of them as well. For us it was sort of the next logical step.

Nina Frye: We wanted to see what our artwork would look like on other products, and instead of dishing out the money and doing it ourselves, we launched a site on CafePress. You will see tote bags, coffee mugs, greeting cards, messenger bags, in color. We do have a set of notecards that we do offer online on our website but those are black and white.

What would you do differently if you had it to do all over again?

Nina Frye: I think one thing that we might have done differently had we known, but again it’s just two moms who kind of jumped into it. Right now we get our tee shirts from a wholesaler. I think if we would have known, again this is something being new to entrepreneurship, and I had never been in retail and neither had Cindi, I think we would have ordered our shirts in a much larger capacity overseas with the tags already in them. You know you’re getting to that point that it’s a big chunk of money you’ve already invested in the shirts you have now and to turn it over and — but then wholesale is much cheaper. It’s a hard transition to do.

Cindi Schmitzer: That’s an excellent question. I guess the thing I would say is when we first decided to do this we just knew we had to have a website because well you just do when you’re doing business in this day and age. We had an initial website and we just sort of shot from the hip to get a website put together and then we ended up having to redo it. I guess what I would have suggested doing if I had it to do over again, I would just go for the website, dump a ton of money into it and just go for the one we have now instead of doing it half baked and then backing out of it.

Nina Frye: If you could see our website the first time around, you would die. We should have saved it.

What advice do you have for moms who want to start their own business?

Cindi Schmitzer: What I would say is to go for it absolutely go for it because I can tell you that at the end of the day, I could not be more thrilled with, and really proud of us because it was a scary thing, that we actually had an idea and did something about it. To me, that is just IT, right? Everybody has idea, good ideas that maybe they could do something with them, but so many people just DON’T. I just think for us I couldn’t have been happier looking back on it and it’s just been a fantastic learning experience and it’s just been great and fantastic that we got off our butts and did something about it.

Nina Frye: SCORE meets nationwide. If you can find a local chapter, it’s free and they guide you. I want to say they’re retired executives, but they don’t like to say that they’re retired executives. When you look up SCORE, I don’t think that’s in there. These guys were very successful at some point, and I think they have to go through very thorough screening to get there. They give you such great advice, and you can’t just go in there and mess around. They tell you right off the bat if you have business or not at all. Even if you just have an idea and go in there and run it by them. Everything is confidential. Even if they think this is a crazy idea, they can go in and talk with someone confidentially and not worry about it getting stolen. They have background in marketing and any type of legal advice, there were people that we met with in the apparel industry that gave us great advice

Cindi Schmitzer: They come from all different background and industries.

Anything else?

Nina Frye: Yes. We’re not some young chicks here. We’re practically middle aged here and we started our own business.

You go, Jersey girls! For more info on Nina and Cindi’s sassy fashions for moms — and dads! — visit LTDChix.com.

Contents Copyright © 2008 Kristen King

Tags: womens busines blog, biz chicks rule, kristen king, cindi schmitzer, nina frye, ltdchix, sparta, new jersey, female entrepreneur, tee shirts for moms, mommy tees