The idea came in 1981, eight months into her pregnancy while she was staring at a “beat-up old rocker” that was still structurally sound.
“I could recover that,” Kathy Foust thought to herself.
A completely self-taught upholsterer, Foust did such a nice job recovering the rocking chair that her husband bought her an $800 machine for additional projects. She took out a classified ad in the Omaha World-Herald under the “Services” heading and lined up her first paid gig — a six-cushion, skirted couch.
Editor’s note: This excerpt comes from an article in the current issue of Community, the Magazine of Metropolitan Community College (Nebraska). It is reprinted with permission.
Before she was able to collect her $75 payment, she had to redo the cushions on it three times. It taught her an important business lesson on pricing and the value of quality…
