VERO POBLETE-HOWELL poses with a baby who is wearing the organic garments she produces at Baobab Organics in Waldoboro. Poblete-Howell won a $400 mini grant from Women, Work & Community that she’ll use to promote her business.
JUDGES FOR Women, Work & Community watch and listen to a presentation made by Rebecca Kosakowski, who runs Midcoast College Counseling LLC of Brunswick. The judges said they were quite impressed with Kosakowski’s “pitch.” Midcoast College Counseling, which helps students find a college that’s right for them, has a Facebook page.
“What I really liked was her identification of her lack (of a brand),” said Jenn Dobransky, microenterprise coordinator for Women, Work & Community. “I kind of liked that approach. This is going to be difficult.”
Dobransky and the other three judges at the University College Bath/Brunswick event on May 7 didn’t know at that point that it would be the third presenter who would get the award. They chose Vero Poblete-Howell, owner of Baobab Organics in Waldoboro, for the $400 meant to help her promote her business.
Dobransky worked with Shelley Taylor, Midcoast regional manager of Women, Work & Community; Nancy Shevin, owner of Brunswick Reupholstering Co. LLC; and Dennis Unger, director of University College, to judge the contestants.
“Vero from Baobob Organics provided a marketing pitch that combined a deep technical expertise, a powerfully innovative spirit, and a collaborative community-minded approach to building her business,” Unger said. “She produces a beautiful line of organic clothing in a sustainable manner that empowers home-based seamstresses throughout Maine. Vero provided a compelling argument for building an online store to increase her share of direct consumer sales.”
Grant criteria
The judges awarded the grant based on the following criteria:
— Branding (developing a professional, unified image of your business and implementing your brand through appropriate channels).
— Access to markets (promoting your product or service to reach new markets; marketing your product for wholesale or retail).
— Networking and collaboration (professional development and networking opportunities that extend your business connections in your industry; partnership with other businesses or organizations to increase your visibility and sales).
— Local impact and investment (preference is given to pitches/proposals in which both the grant applicant and the vendors with whom you plan to contract are located in the Midcoast).
— Need and capacity (please consider the question of how the funding will make an impact on your business. Be specific about increased sales and how the grant will impact your business).
The judges believed that Vero’s pitch thoroughly covered all of those categories. Poblete-Howell is married to Josh Howell, a Woolwich native. She will use the grant money to develop a website.
“We are a family-owned business with a base in Waldoboro,” Poblete-Howell said. “Named after the largest tree on Earth, Baobab is dedicated to design and produce quality organic and natural garments for infants and toddlers in a way that benefits our farms, our community and our environment.
“We will use the grants to launch a new website oriented to direct sales for our customers and a blog about sustainable textiles and apparel,” Poblete-Howell continued.
“She has a clear and distinct short-term and long-term vision for her business,” Dobransky said. “We felt that the $400 award would have an immediate and concrete effect on her business and that its affect would ripple out into the community indefinitely.
“Vero’s business model is a cottage industry which contracts with other moms/seamstresses throughout Maine,” Dobransky continued. “Her products are Maine-made in a sustainable way.”
Poblete-Howell is a textile designer originally from Santiago, Chile. She studied ancient textiles at Santiago’s Museum of PreColumbian Arts, worked for 10 years in the textile industry as a designer and buyer, and hosted an international textile art exhibition before meeting her husband and moving to Maine.
Baobab Organics uses only the finest organic and sustainable fabrics for its clothing. These are soft, precious fabrics, and you can feel the care that went into their manufacture.
“We work primarily with cotton, because we love its feel and we know our babies will, too,” Poblete-Hopwell writes on her website. “We use organic colorgrown cotton, natural undyed organic cotton, and a variety of organic knit and printed patterns using low-impact dyes and water-based inks. We also use recycled cotton blends, which utilize pre-consumer waste and require no virgin cotton at all.”
Dobransky added that Poblete-Howell “is truly a Maine entrepreneur who does it all: She is creative, she has a tremendous amount of technical skill, she is committed to collaborating with others in her community and she has the vision to make it all happen. Vero’s innovative mind-set pervades every single aspect of her business. Baobab Organics is a testament of how small business is the driving force for economic development in Maine.”
lgrard@timesrecord.com
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