Businesswoman explains why she left Sebec, Maine

New York State’s gain is Maine’s loss. I was surprised and sad to learn this week that Darn Good Yarn is no longer in Sebec, Maine. Founder and CEO Nicole Snow first came to my attention when Governor Paul LePage, speaking of Maine micro-businesses in his 2014 State of the State address said, “Nicole Snow of Sebec is a very successful micro-entrepreneur. She created Darn Good Yarn, and she does all of her business online. Nicole is growing her company into a million-dollar business, thanks to the Internet.”

Darn Good Yarn is a wholesaler/retailer of original recycled yarns, clothing and home goods. Nicole, a US Air Force Veteran, wanted to combine two of her passions in life – art and helping others. Darn Good Yarn’s mission is: provide phenomenal quality fibers to enthusiasts, while helping the women of India and Nepal become autonomous and self-reliant.

When I spoke this week with Nicole, now living and running Darn Good Yarn in Schenectady, N.Y., my first question was, “Did relocating have anything to do with your ability to run your business in Maine?” Yes, she answered. The “main catalyst” she said was her husband’s job. Still, she said, “I had a really difficult time. [Darn Good Yarn] was still growing pretty steadily, just around a million dollars a year gross, and I was having a helluva time finding local people to help me run and staff the business.”

Others have spoken, though this column, of the shortage of broadband internet in Piscataquis County and the resulting missed opportunities. The eCommerce business, Darn Good Yarn, relied first on a DSL connection. “I remember days, like, if a snow storm hit and something got off kilter, I would be without internet and I couldn’t run a million dollar business for a day — which was really scary,” said Snow.

Thanks to “another business owner” in southern Maine reading about Darn Good Yarn, and contacting her, Snow was able to connect to a higher speed internet connection “that probably would have carried me another year. But the reality is, as an eCommerce company, a majority of the applications I use daily are cloud based. I need [internet connectivity] that’s working well. Everything these days [happens in] very real time. That connectivity component is so critical, Snow said.

“But the internet is almost [just] one side of it,” she continued. “Because things do happen today in such real time, I think, as a community, Piscataquis can do better trying to build a more entrepreneurial-based community,” Nicole said.

Using Darn Good Yarn as an example, Nicole said of her now $4 million dollar a year business, “Not that that’s huge, but it pays my bills and it keeps 10 other people employed. We will have marketing plans put into place and we might change them two weeks later because we have new information. So, when you talk about training [for people], what would be really good is to have computer skills, but [also a focus] on agile thinking, and being able to change course, adapt, think on the fly, and move very quickly,” she said.

Nicole agrees we’re talking about a cultural shift. She thinks “it comes down to getting people” within the spread-out Piscataquis County community “really fired up about entrepreneurship.” Having an active entrepreneurial supporting community? ”That’s enough to keep me in Piscataquis. And that’s enough to keep my multi-million dollar business in Piscataquis,” Nicole said.

How do we bring these people together? We’ll look at more of Nicole Snow’s darn good ideas in an upcoming column.

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections until 2015. He is now using his communications skills to serve clients in the private sector.