When Women Lead: Retail and Wholesale with Heart
It's the story of us.
Back when Thistle Farms started in 1997, it wasn’t Thistle Farms – its sole focus was the same residential program we still operate today. Only then it was known as Magdalene.
It wasn’t until a few years later that the justice enterprise known as Thistle Farms came to be. The two year residential program provided the longer-term, holistic support needed for women overcoming the trauma of exploitation to have a stronger footing than they would in traditional 90-day programs.
But, after graduation, obstacles that were beyond the scope of what the program could influence at the time caused a boomerang effect. Women would graduate from the program, go out into the world, and encounter shut doors and rejections from employment opportunities due to past criminal records and unstable work histories, perpetuating the cycles of housing and food insecurity that so often lead to exploitation in the first place.
Without employment, it was impossible to rent a home, get your driver’s license back in order to get a car due to past court fees and jail fines. It was a cycle, and one that Becca Stevens was determined to break.
In 2001, women currently in the programs and graduates worked side by side with volunteers, pouring candles and blending essential oils to sell to other churches, and at Avon-style home parties.
Home Interior Parties Couldn’t Hold a Candle to Us
“We started out with just 5 women working in Becca’s old chapel, then we graduated up to maybe 10. And while we were doing that, we were going to house parties, going to law offices downtown…Becca’s friends were how we got started with the home parties,” recalls Katrina, Director of National Sales and 2008 Graduate. “She’d say, “Invite 10-15 of your friends over and tell them to bring their check books because we’re gonna bring products to sell!”
“I enjoyed going to house parties, getting to talk to different people,” adds Rita, Business Development Administrator and 2012 Graduate. “We’d go to these big congregations and then somebody there would invite us over to meet their friends, then another person at that same church would invite us over to bring products and so on. I mean, that’s the reason—"
“That’s the reason why we’re here today,” Katrina agrees.
Even though the parties were eventually discontinued due to not bringing in as much money in sales revenue as needed to justify the time spent, it generated something even more valuable: connections. Those connections went on to inspire the donations, volunteer support, and so much more that helped a scrappy little nonprofit in West Nashville become the global movement for women’s freedom that it is today.
Growing. And growing.
The organization expanded their reach, selling products to locally-owned businesses in Nashville. “Becca had friends and convinced Pangea in Hillsboro Village, and they told other shops about us. Those places would invite Becca to come speak, but she never went anywhere without one or two of the women. Locally or out of town, we sold product and shared our story,” said Katrina.
Whole Foods became Thistle Farms’ first major corporate customer in 2016. And it came about after Becca and Katrina ran into the President of Whole Foods when he was in town visiting the Green Hills store. “We were having dinner out somewhere one night and she looked across the room and said, “That’s the Whole Foods president!”” laughed Katrina. “Next thing I knew, she was talking to him, asking him to carry our products. He invited us to the Green Hills store to do a presentation for the people who were in town from the Main Office, and he was like, “Yeah, we want to work with you.” Soon after, we ended up doing an order to all 450 stores. And we were not ready for that!”
That order was for 30,000 candles that were poured over the course of six weeks. Prior to that, Thistle Farms’ average was 50,000 candles per year, so it was an all-hands on deck affair to meet the production timeline. But made it they did, and the justice enterprise’s footprint exploded overnight.
It’s important to remember that throughout all of this expansive growth, it was women who had gone through the Residential Program making every bit of the magic happening behind the scenes, from the production floor to the finance department, building systems and teaching themselves as others as they went.
“When I first came to the Wholesale Team, I was still working in Finance and helped with processing the payments from wholesale partners. We had a system with folders – none of this computer stuff,” recalled Rita.
“I’ve still got my folders,” added Katrina. “Rita didn’t see herself as a sales person, and others didn’t, either. But I knew she was. So, we’ve taken Rita’s gifts – because that’s a gift that you have, Rita, being able to do the accounting part and the sales part. That’s why more has been given to you, rather than pulling somebody in from the outside to do this work.”
Rita’s face breaks into a grin, “And I love every minute of it, too! I love my job. When I first came on to Team Katrina and Sherri [then-Director of Business Development, now Director of Research & Development], I was like, “What am I going to do here?” But I was ready.”
What Sets Us Apart
The grit and dedication it takes to move from pouring candles in church basements to occupying a 22,000 square foot manufacturing and shipping logistics facility with a retail shop and programs to support wholesale and corporate sales in just 20 years may not seem so audacious of a trajectory to most entrepreneurs.
But when you are “A mission with a business, rather than a business with a mission,” as Forbes Magazine said of Thistle Farms in 2019, that feat can seem monumental. Being mission forward – having the very women your mission serves making up not only the majority of the workforce but also stepping into leadership roles to help guide business strategy – means the odds are stacked against you.
The thing is, the women of Thistle Farms are all-too familiar with odds being stacked against them each step of the way. So, they know firsthand that with love and community, those odds can be toppled.
“I think we’ve been able to have these great relationships with little shops and big corporations over the years because Katrina would go out and speak to people. I think that’s where the bulk of it has come from,” said Rita. “She would go out and speak to everybody in the world back in the day. And her story just does things for people. And I think that’s brought in a lot of our customers – retail and wholesale.”
Katrina shakes her head. “It’s the story. Not my story, not yours. But THE story. The story of us.”
