Interview with the owner of Sugar Maple Trading Company: Cindy Hughes
Cindy Hughes is 61 years old. She has completed some college education and she had first job at age 16, where she worked in a grocery store starting as a cashier and ending up as a lead bookkeeper. She homeschooled her children from K - 12 and helped her husband with the jobs he had, even the transition into his own business. Her husband is, in her words, "pretty semi-retired." Her father and grandfather were both in the Air Force so when she was three her family moved to Ohio from Japan and then to Texas when she was 14. She spent the bulk of her life in Texas, over 32 years, and it's where she met her husband and they started their family. She and her family moved here to Virginia in 2009.
How long have you owned this business?
Since 2018. I've had it seven and a half years now.
My husband was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2012 and we went through a couple years dealing with that. Then in 2015 I was diagnosed with breast cancer, stage three. So I spent a year in treatment with that. During that process, which was grueling, we had kind of little jokes about maybe in our retirement years having just some type of little shop to occupy time. You know, just have fun. So way back in, oh gosh, '95 we were vacationing in Seaside Florida and just had this little seed that just kind of grew and we joked about through the years. We actually came on a vacation to Virginia in 2006, we were in Highland County, and we were driving down a road and it was called Maple Sugar Lane and I just said 'hey, if we ever do that shop or if I ever do that I'm going to call it Sugar Maple Trading Company.' And my husband said, 'well why are you going to do that?' and I said 'because that way I could sell whatever I want.' So I actually went home from that trip in 2006 and bought the domain name for it and had it for years.
My grandmother had candy dishes that she always had candy in and she always matched her candy to the dish. She had a fish shaped candy dish so it was always filled with Swedish fish and that was one of my favorites of hers. I inherited all her candy dishes but that candy dish I kept and I keep the Swedish Fish, if I can keep it filled. So in 2015, during that hard year of treatment, I wasn't able to be around my family much, I needed to be kind of isolated. But one day I had a rare chance: my granddaughter, our oldest grandchild, came over and she went right to that candy dish and she got a Swedish Fish out of it, well, I handed it to her and I honestly was transported back many, many years ago to my grandmother doing the same thing with me. And I just thought 'man, that dish, it's special because it holds not only the past but the present and then, I'm looking at my granddaughter, it holds the future, you know, if it survives it'll go on to one of the grandkids. So in that moment, I just thought 'I'm living in the moment during this year. Every moment's precious and I want people to celebrate moments. I want them to stop and take moments in the day and just take a breath and say 'yeah, you know this smells good' or 'oh I remember that.' Family to me is so very important, so the whole thing of strengthening my family, enjoying moments with my family, remembering moments of the past and how objects can help you do that. So I came out of that with just a vision, I mean a clear vision of Sugar Maple Trading Company and just a desire to do it.
What turned an idea into action?
So in 2018 I created the LLC and we actually started at home and I started with a podcast and started making these little homemade banners and Hannah, my youngest child, she was my first employee. We spent a lot of time at home working on this type of stuff. And then I had the opportunity to participate in Launch Lex, which is kind of like Shark Tank. By that time, I'd already created a business plan, but I thought that eventually I would open a store and I was going to do everything online first - create, you know, build the podcast and do all this stuff first and the store would just be kind of the fruits of all of that. Well, things did not work out that way. It's flipped and we did the store first and now we're working on all the stuff that I thought we would be doing seven and a half years ago - we're doing that now. The store is firmly established and so now we get to work on this other stuff that's really fun and we're excited about. So that's kind of how it all came about.
What is your mission and your dream for the business?
Our number one goal is to strengthen families and individuals. We've tried to provide things that, you know, just kind of unplugged you from the world a little bit. Whether it's a great smelling hand soap that you just take a minute and smell it while you're washing your hands. Whether it's something a little bit more - an art pad where you're just creating something, you know? So that's what we're trying to do: trying to help people. So you come in and you think 'oh, it's just a little gift shop' but there's a big mission, a vision behind it.
What are the three main struggles that your business has faced and how did you overcome them?
Well, I could say the number one thing at the beginning, and it still pops up from time to time of course depending upon circumstances and what's happening, was money. I didn't have a lot of money starting off because I wasn't expecting to have a store. This whole new opportunity came up but I didn't have a lot of money. So I started with just very little. One of the things that we did know that we wanted to do is we wanted to have vintage items mixed with the new items. You know, that whole thing of that candy dish, right? So that helped bolster inventory and then also helped with profit margin as well in the beginning. My dad invested a little bit when he found out that I didn't win anything from the Launch Lex. I was just on my own. One of the good things that came out of that was the location of the store. My dad helped me secure the lease and stuff on that by investing. So that has been probably the top challenge to overcome.
We started in 2018, we were rocking and rolling in 2019, and then COVID hit. To have everything just shut down, and we were shut down, but you still have your rent to pay, you still have everything to do. Having my employees, my kids, dependent on the pay, you know? So you kind of get back up again and then it's just a roller coaster.
I would think time is another one. For so many years we had our own business that was home-based. Our time was our own so we could do whatever we wanted to do, whenever we wanted to do it. From waking up to just whatever. If we wanted to do something, that's how we did it. I spent the bulk of my life homeschooling my kids. We would get up and say 'hey, what are we going to do today?' We lived in Fort Worth and it was a great city. We had wonderful memberships to everything so we could just say 'hey, are we going to go to the zoo? Are we gonna go to the museum today? What are we doing?' I've always had this freedom of time. When you have a retail store, you have to be there and so that has been a little bit of an adjustment to be able to do that. It's the one thing I could probably see why some people maybe quit after two years. It may not be a money thing but it may be a time thing. You get kind of like, after two or three years, 'okay this is it. We gotta keep doing this.' Now we've got it down to, you know, a science kind of, so the store's not hard anymore but it still is time. My husband and I are the ones that work on Saturdays so there's a lot of Saturday things that we don't get to do because we have to be open. But we have done little things, like there's times during the year - Memorial Day: we'll make sure we take that off because that's just that's my favorite time of the year. My birthday's around that time.
I think the third thing probably is just learning. I had not done a retail store before, was not very proficient on the web, there's a lot of things. I had a bookkeeping background, so that helped. Even my homeschool years, sourcing information, I had to learn things on my own so that really set a foundation for me. So the things that I had done previously and then also setting up and helping my husband with his business, I understood there were cycles in business so all that stuff was pretty preparatory. I felt like I had a good foundation but man, there's still so much to learn. I knew how to find information and stuff like that but I'm constantly learning and we're constantly learning how to do things. I think those are probably our top three things. There's this huge learning curve and even now, like, learning new skills: videoing and even podcasts. I've done several episodes through the years but it's ramping up again, so there's so many things that we're learning and having to learn. In 2020 we did our website and so learning how to do a website and keeping it, managing inventory. I mean, there's just so many things to learn. So that's probably the third thing.
Do you have any tips or advice for someone who legitimately wants to open a business that will last?
I think my top thing about going into business is when it comes to the mechanics of the business, there's a plethora of information out there. You can just find out how to do a business plan, how to set things up, on financing. I mean, just anything you want to know about - it's out there, you just you go search it out. Small business administration: there's so many places that you can go and get information.
But I think one of the essential things that people don't often think about, but it's something that we did because I had seen it from my own past experience of how much it affected things, is to understand why you're doing a business? What are your values in setting up that business? You can look at any business, the way that they operate, the way that they treat employees, the way that they treat customers, attitudes - you can understand what their values are whether they have stated their values or not. And I knew there were specific things that we were going to grow this business on and so with that, when it came to some decisions, we just always turn to our values. One of our values is "be generous." So, this is just a little thing but it just shows you: These ladies came in the other day and they were putting together a wedding gift but they were from out of town and they didn't have ribbon. They came in and they're like 'do you have any ribbon?' Well, we didn't have any for sale and they were telling us what they were doing and so my husband, Jeff, was like 'oh hey look, pick what you want.' So we gave her all this ribbon, and they were like, 'how do we pay it?' and we said 'no, just take it.' One of our values is to be generous but that made a huge impression on them. And then we get repeat people, even from out of town if they're coming back through again, they'll come back because they know you to be generous.
Being resourceful is another one of ours. When it comes to business, there's lean times. We make these wonderful windows and decorations, and there are times when we have more money than not, but we kind of kept our stuff and we're, like, 'how can we repurpose this?' and stuff like that. So those values help in some essential decisions. A lot of people, you know, they're starting the business and they don't understand why it's not working. Look at what is of value to you. Look why you started the business and if you're fulfilling it but it's not getting you where you think you want to go, understanding why you're doing it. Having some values that are firm, that will help you make decisions in the future, is an essential thing in business that you don't hear about a lot. It might be written in a book or whatever but I don't think people take it as seriously as it is and I attribute the reason why we're still here is because of those values. They've really helped through challenging times and good times too.
