Jill Blashack believes her title, CEO, “sounds a bit too conventional,” considering the close-knit company she runs and the almost accidental way it came to be. And even though she started Tastefully Simple, a retailer of easy-to-prepare gourmet foods sold at home tasting parties, Blashack hesitates to describe herself as an entrepreneur. “I don’t consider myself to be a risk taker,” she says.
Still, she’s grown Alexandria-based Tastefully Simple into a 320-employee company since its inception in 1995. Its 20,000 consultants—many of whom are stay-at-home mothers and women looking for supplementary income—helped the company garner $110 million in sales last year. These representatives are recruited by other consultants, purchase a starter kit for $170, and, as independent business owners, receive up to 36 percent commission on the sales they generate at each home party. This year, the company projects that sales of its more than 30 gourmet products, which include seasonings, soups, bread mixes, desserts, and beverages, will reach $116 million.
A 1979 graduate of two associate-degree programs in sales and marketing at Alexandria Technical College, Blashack spent three years afterwards running a cafe owned by her father in her nearby hometown of Villard, then worked other jobs at a tanning salon and a bank.
In 1989, Blashack started a business of her own, Care With Flair, selling gift baskets filled with gourmet foods and items such as candles and frames from a storefront in Alexandria. Her small business employed a handful of people and netted about $100,000 a year—not enough, she decided, relative to the effort she was putting into it.
“Then in 1992, and in 1994, I started to think, ‘I don’t want to invest much more of my time and energy into the financial rewards.'” Blashack looked at other small businesses to see what successful entrepreneurs were doing to make their companies grow. She attended a gourmet foods event and, on a whim, decided to focus her efforts on selling gourmet food products. She started Tastefully Simple in 1995, and the company has grown steadily since then, with sales expected to reach $116 million this year.
That was enough to give Blashack respect for Tastefully Simple. “People are looking for great foods, and they’re willing to pay more for a quality product that comes with a story,” she says. “In the upper Midwest, the products are more authentic than anywhere in the nation. My joke is that in the beginning, kind of our market research was inviting market research.”
Blashack’s first few days after she launched her new business in June of 1995 were discouraging. One evening, as she made calls to try to schedule tasting parties, Steve, her husband, teased, “So, Zach, we’re playing out back. I’m looking out longingly thinking, ‘I want to be out there,'” Blashack recalls. She made about 20 calls, and “I think I got one booking that night.”
Her first few days after she launched her new business in June of 1995 were discouraging. One evening, as she made calls to try to schedule tasting parties, Steve, her husband, teased, “So, Zach, we’re playing out back. I’m looking out longingly thinking, ‘I want to be out there,'” Blashack recalls. She made about 20 calls, and “I think I got one booking that night.”
Her first few days after she launched her new business in June of 1995 were discouraging. One evening, as she made calls to try to schedule tasting parties, Steve, her husband, teased, “So, Zach, we’re playing out back. I’m looking out longingly thinking, ‘I want to be out there,'” Blashack recalls. She made about 20 calls, and “I think I got one booking that night.”
Feeling defeated, she went to work the next day at her facility—a 1,200-square-foot shed where she packaged orders on a pool table. Then she got a call from the print shop that was publishing the Tastefully Simple catalogs. Blashack’s first wish was that they would be printed in time for her first scheduled tasting party. Instead, the print shop owner said he liked the idea so much that it intrigued her, and she wanted to book one.
“After I hung up, I looked up to the heavens and said, ‘Thank you, God,'” Blashack recalls. “I just needed that so badly. It’s so easy to get discouraged, get fearful, and retract ourselves whenever we start something new.”
By year’s end, seven consultants had joined Tastefully Simple. The next year, Blashack had 33 consultants. By 1998, revenues reached the $1 million mark.
That same year, both Blashack’s brother and husband died. In those dark times, she devoted her energies to raising her son and to the growth of her company, and was rewarded with a 7,600 percent increase in revenues between 1999 and 2003, inclusion on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies three years in a row, and winning the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Minnesota and Dakotas region in 2000.
Blashack credits her father, a farmer, for her drive, and her mother for her ability to successfully manage a business. “Dad was typically before his time,” she says. “He was an idea man. He was involved with ethanol 20 years ago. My mom strove for excellence in everything she did. She also gave me my philosophical perspective.”
Her father died last November. When Blashack heard, her mom made a special trip to the national conference of the company’s consultants in the Twin Cities last year to watch his daughter speak. “I introduced him, but he couldn’t come up on stage because he was in a wheelchair,” Blashack says. “Everybody gave him a standing ovation.”
For Blashack, the standing ovation illustrated something about the character of her company: the way her own story and success inspire others and connect them to her business. “People love the story of how she started Tastefully Simple in a small shed, Blashack’s now, the company operates out of a new 178,000-square-foot facility that overlooks woods and wetlands.
