Shauna Wright Sloan

SALT LAKE CITY (Monday, September 05, 2005) - When Shauna Wright Sloan opened her first store in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, her goals didn't include international successs in the resale of children's products, she just wanted to start a business that would help parents share quality items that children outgrow so quickly.
Kid to Kid®, an upscale resale and consignment store created in 1992, began as a result of a bargai-hunting hobby Sloan aquired while raising her six children in Ohio. Sloan, along with her husband Brent, who is a lawyer and shopping center developer, began exploring the economic potential of owning a second-hand business after watching a local used-clothing store rapidly expand into a successful chain of 27.
Once they decided this opportunity might work for them, Sloan says she and her husband "spent hours in the back of other used retailers getting a feel for what kind of people shopped there, their estimated income, and which products they were interested in buying."
Following their used used-retail investigation, Brent was offered a job opportunity in Boston. But when the Sloans brought their children to Utah to be watched by relatives while the couple started house-hunting in Boston, plans changed.
"When we arrived in Utah, I felt we needed to stay and follow our dream," Sloan says. Convinced that no operator had fully maximized the potential behind the resale concept, Sloan was confident her resale-store venture would be successful. And she was right. Sloan was recently selected as the Utah National Association of Woman Business Owners' (NAWBO) Woman of the Year and is now working to reach the goal of having 100 operating stores within the next five years.
With the help of her oldest children, that goal is becoming a reality. "My children--whose growth has coincided with Kid to Kid®, are now helping run the company," Sloan says. "Scott, our oldest, is the marketing director, while Chelsea works on store support for me."
But in the beginning, Sloan's family focused enterprise actually made it difficult to focus on her family. As she grew her business, Sloan spent countless hours away from her kids, making numerous trips around the world helping her franchise owners thrive--including traveling six times to Portugal in 2001 to assist a couple in obtaining a master license to establish Kid to Kid® roots in Europe.
"There have been several instances along the way where I recall wondering why I gave up being a tennis-playing country club mom to work," Sloan says. But part of her payback has been seeing other women create their own success. "Forty-two of our 49 franchises are owned by women," she says. "Like me, these women are not only business owners; most are mothers, chauffeurs, and volunteers."
Determined to watch these women succeed, Sloan has offered extended loans and reorganized royalty payments to franchisees when economic difficulties surfaced. Due to her strong support system, no Kid to Kid® franchises have closed within the first five years of operations.
"My store owners and I work as a team," Sloan says. "Kid to Kid® is a company where everyone can win. Children get clothes in good condition, parents save money and get credit for the items they no longer need, and my store owners and I win by operating a profitable store."
Think of it as: family to family.

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