Retooling a Market for Women
Barbara Kavovit’s life fell apart after Sept. 11. Her marriage ended, the construction company she built in the 1990s collapsed and she found herself millions of dollars in debt.
But Kavovit did not despair -- she took out her toolbox and went to work.
The Manhattan single mother has resurrected herself as a home-repair guru with a sleek set of toolkits to help women who want to do handiwork. Her tools are designed to better fit a woman’s size and strength, such as lighter hammers with distinctive curves and screwdrivers with thumb rests.
She hasn’t become the blue-collar Martha Stewart just yet, but she is making a bid for just such a moniker with her products at major retailers, two books and a new position as the home-improvement coach for America Online.
Kavovit, 37, doesn’t protest the comparison, saying the brand will follow the path of the Martha Stewart model with a multimedia approach that includes radio, television and the Internet.
“I want to be the brand women turn to for easy, fun, smart solutions that enhance their home, empower their spirit,” said Kavovit, the mother of an 8-year-old boy, Zachary.
Janet Hoffman, a managing partner at retail consulting firm Accenture, said the growth of companies such as Kavovit’s shows how much the home-improvement market has expanded in recent years. Big home-improvement retailers are offering Saturday morning classes at which women can learn how to work on their homes themselves, and it only makes sense that woman-friendly tools would reach the shelves, she said.
“The easier you make it for people to do it yourself ... the more likely they are to come back and make more purchases,” she said.
The widespread popularity of home-improvement television shows, combined with soaring real estate values, have also fueled the demand for such products, Hoffman said.
Marketing herself as Barbara K, Kavovit has done a serious repair job on her life after her marriage and the construction company she built fell apart after the terrorist attacks.
“My husband literally took the tool kit. It was like a Eureka moment for me,” she said.
The construction business had raised her income above $1 million for several years as she hired crews to design and renovate Manhattan skyscrapers. The company crashed, leaving her millions of dollars in debt and scared. She was as penniless as her childhood days in the Bronx, where there was lots of love but no vacations and no airplane trips.
A fear of inadequacy surfaced at times, such as when her son asked his newly divorced mother to put up a basketball net. She was fortunate to have a background in construction, but she believed that other women needed help too. She knew that a growing number of women were buying homes without men and needed some manly skills for small tasks.
So she remade her life on the Upper East Side while going to work designing tools. She first needed a carrying case. She teamed with a male designer who had trouble thinking outside the toolbox.
“He kept wanting to draw square and I kept making it curve,” she said, chuckling at the thought.
After spending $8,000 for a prototype of “the perfect bag,” Kavovit traveled to China and designed tools. The president of a Taiwanese company, a woman, assisted her, praising the idea as timely for an untapped market.
In choosing tools, Kavovit said she thought of simple chores such as hanging pictures or shelves or fixing a ceiling fan or the wobbly leg on a wooden table.
As her ideas took shape, so did the tools. The hammer was lighter than the one she used to construct a bunk bed when she was 8, a childhood memory of accomplishment that inspired her to become a handywoman.
She also tweaked the shape of the wrench, the pliers and the screwdriver to make them more woman-friendly.
After designing toolboxes, Kavovit turned toward helping women with other tasks. Soon, she had developed a hang-it kit for hanging most anything and a dormitory survival kit for students. Then she added a line of automotive safety products for the car, including jumper cables, flashlights and glow sticks, “everything to keep you safe until help comes.”
She cold-called retailers, a skill she developed out of college when she entered the construction and repair business by arranging contracts with companies to do small repair tasks such as changing a loading dock door. Those small jobs led to $10 million in Manhattan projects.
Armed with new tools and ideas, she found a receptive audience in America’s retailers.
Soon, she had a display window at a Fifth Avenue department store and contracts with Home Depot Inc., Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. and Target Corp., among others.
Kavovit raised $14 million through investors, retaining 42% of her company, Barbara K Enterprises Inc. She emerged from her 2001 debt two years ago.
Still, there are setbacks, such as when J.C. Penney Co. pulled the line after seeing disappointing sales on a $1-million order. Kavovit blames it on the product being placed next to the men’s restroom. She said part of her job is to get women’s tools positioned more creatively, near where curtains or paint are sold, for example, so women see them.
She said she is finding increasing success, and so are her customers.
“Who would ever think RadioShack would give us an opportunity?” she said, noting the newest chain to take on her line. “It’s about convincing the electronics sector that women have to hang stereo speakers. After 2 1/2 years of being in RadioShack’s face, they gave us a shot.”
With all her plans, Kavovit said there are limits.
“You’ll never find us doing bath towels or bedsheets,” she said. “We want to make what was typically hard easy ... to make women’s lives easy.”
