A recent tweet from Venturebeat’s Jolie O’Dell said the following: “Women: stop making start-ups about fashion, shopping and babies. At least for the next few years. You’re embarrassing me.” This begs the question, are women starting the wrong types of businesses? As a public relations firm that specializes in marketing to women, we’d like to add our two cents.
Journalist Meghan Casserly who covers women in business for Forbes.com states that she receives pitches every day for products like children’s sunglasses, flash sale websites and direct-sales jewelry lines, all conceived and run by female founders. She goes on to say that “from an editorial perspective” she would like to see “a little diversity” but as a “champion of women infiltrating the highest ranks of business” she would love to see “more women filing big-ticket IPOs on tech-heavy endeavors.”
The idea that the majority of women focus their start-ups on beauty, shopping, mothering or fashion is often referred to as “the Pink Ghetto” of entrepreneurs.
The problem with this, in our opinion, isn’t the ‘what’ but the ‘why.’ Feminine is not a business model. Women-owned businesses in the female-focused or mommy market isn’t a new concept and neither is the fact that women control 85% of household spending.
But women starting businesses for audiences they understand is no different from men starting a sports business just because they are a sports fan. We agree with Geri Stengel, president of Ventureneer who says “Man or woman, becoming an entrepreneur is most successful when you pair passion with expertise.”
It isn’t enough that FletcherPR is a marketing firm owned and staffed by women. In order to help our clients reach women through the power of media, we still have to be experts in this field. Sara Blakely might have had a passion for fashion, but Spanx, the company as we know it today, wouldn’t have happened without expertise in the field of marketing to get that product in the hands of women.
So the question isn’t are women starting the wrong types of companies…we think it’s are they starting companies with the right plans in place? It’s hard work to be an entrepreneur, but it is possible to be successful. With the right amount of passion and know-how, women who want to go into business can change the world.
FletcherPR is a national communications firm that specializes in reaching women through the power of media. Headquartered in Knoxville, TN with staff in Nashville & Los Angeles, we are a full-service agency providing strategic public relations, social media and marketing communications services to our clients throughout the U.S.