Woman Owned Lemont: Amanda from Aster Gardens
In the United States, roughly 35% of businesses are woman-owned. Today, In Lemont Downtown, nearly 85% of businesses are woman-owned. These businesses fuel our economic growth, provide jobs for locals, and help fuel a pipeline for entrepreneurship for all.
At Lemont Downtown, we hear from a lot of people: How do I get started? Could I have a business in Lemont? Well, yes!
Throughout the month, we’ll be sitting down with some of your favorite women-owned businesses to learn more about their story, some insight on what it takes to start and run a successful business, and hopefully inspire the next wave of entrepreneurs.
First up, Amanda Thomsen at Aster Gardens!
KG: How did you decide to make the jump to open up Aster Gardens in Lemont?
AT: Lemont was the only place I considered. I’ve always loved Lemont (I grew up in Willowbrook) and could NOT visualize it anywhere else. Sommer, at Mabel’s Market, really facilitated all of this. I told her I wanted to open a little plant shop when I turned 50 and she said “Why wait?.”
She was right. If you know Sommer, you’ll know she’s very often right!
KG: How did you go about financing your businesses? Did you use personal savings, loans, or investors?
AT: Whelp, my Dad died in 2020 and I inherited a tiny bit of money by cleaning out and selling his little bachelor pad. It wasn’t a lot of money, it was devastating work, and I really thought the money would go farther. People in horticulture don’t historically make a lot of money, so saving up on my own would have taken forever but that was the trajectory I was on.
KG: What were the most important pieces when it came to building your brands?
AT: Since I had been an author and blogger for years before the shop, I already had a well-established brand. It was easy to translate that into the shop right away without a lot of finding my feet.
Painting the shop black was important to set the tone for me, lots of plant shops are crisp white and I wanted to shift expectations immediately. Same with the sofa, having a sofa in the shop is a hill I’d die on even though we could really use the room for plants and merchandise.
I love the things that sofa has seen! It invites people to come and chill out with us and get involved in a conversation.
We are building a new community of plant lovers in Lemont!
KG: What does your day-to-day look like now that business is open?
AT: I usually leave the house around 8am to visit plant wholesalers and then make it to the shop in time to print up price stickers before we open at 11am. I like to hand-pick plants instead of ordering them, which means extra legwork but I think it’s worth it. Then it’s time to check every plant in the shop to see who needs to be watered. Then it’s time to close. Just kidding! But it feels like that sometimes.
We do a lot of plant care in a day. We have customers streaming in, I have design projects to work on at my desk and of course, we have these riotous messy classes to set up and clean up after. It’s all become a chaotic routine that I crave.
KG: Your business is incredibly multi-faceted with classes, retail, and the landscaping and consulting work that you do. How do you manage it all? Is there any particular side you're hoping to grow in the next year or so?
AT: The landscaping portion is growing very quickly and I’m working hard now to set things up so I can keep all the plates spinning later this spring. I’m only now starting to get a little overwhelmed by my inbox.
I have an amazing subscriber-ship to the shop’s newsletter where I try to be very honest about what we’re facing, week-to-week. Like last week’s newsletter said that everyone is going to Think Spring all at once and I’m not going to be able to accommodate everyone for their design consultations so maybe we could front-load those spring bookings a little? Everyone is going to want to see me April 15th-May 15th so just book that now.
I hope to grow enough this spring that we can afford to take the inner walls down inside the shop to double our space. That’s the HUGE goal for this year.
KG: What were the biggest obstacles or resistance that you've faced as a business owner?
AT: Loneliness is the hardest part of owning a business. Even my oldest, closest friends don’t want to hear about how I ran out of miss mosaic kits again or road trips to Michigan to pickup cool plants all the time. I don’t really have much else to talk about anymore. Has is consumed me? Yes. Do I regret that? Not one bit. I guess some might say it’s balance that is my greatest obstacle but I disagree.
KG: Where have you found the most support?
AT: I am so fortunate to have a small network of local and independent business owners that I can talk to, at the drop of a hat. People who have been in the trenches and can empathize with even the goofy stuff. It’s the best.
KG: What advice would you give to women who want to open up a business in Lemont?
AT: I think it’s easy to romanticize having a shop and what it will be like, it’s much harder to have a plan for when someone wrenches the handle off your toilet during Hometown Holiday or an employee has a health emergency. I’d say to anyone flirting with opening a business, in Lemont or anywhere else, to tear yourself away from the prettiness and really think about how you can be resilient and responsible when things get messy because they eventually always do.
KG: Plant shops are messy. Business is messy. Thankfully, we fall in love with cleaning up the mess.
