Honoring small business: Indiana SBA awards recognize supporters, too.

• Author: Held, Shari
• Position: SMALL BUSINESS - Small Business Administration

EACH YEAR THE INDIANA Small Business Administration honors individuals who have assisted or promoted small businesses and business owners and small businesses that have excelled in their endeavors. Here are the latest winners and business leaders.

SMALL BUSINESS PERSON OF THE YEAR

Angela R. Timm, Cottage Garden Inc., Bainbridge

Angela Timm had planned to pursue a teaching career, but that didn't happen. "I grew up in an entrepreneurial family," she says. "I started a retail business in Baltimore, Maryland, and I got the bug."

She founded Cottage Garden Inc., a framed art and sentiment gifts company, in her home and staffed it with stay-at-home-moms. The company, whose primary customers are specialty retailers, achieved instant success. Timm's formula for success: provide a quality product at a fair price, ship it within 24 hours and guarantee it would sell. The company doubled its sales every year from 1996-2001. In 2001 she moved the business to Bainbridge. Soon it became the largest non-government employer within a 10-mile radius of Bainbridge.

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The wake of 9/11 put a halt to its growth and the company struggled to survive. It almost didn't. "In 2004 we retooled the company--how it functioned and the product mix," Timm says. "We took it back to the basics and did business the way we did in 1996. The business started thriving again."

Music boxes were introduced into the product line, and soon became the company's No. 1 seller. Sales skyrocketed from less than $4 million in 2005 to $7.5 million in 2007. "The combination of music boxes and framed sentiments ended up being magical in the marketplace," Timm says.

There are no longer any titles within the company, which employs between 30 to 35 people.

Husband Mark says the secret to Timm's success is that she just doesn't know how to fail. "Angela has great ideas and she's never been afraid to back them up. Her energy and enthusiasm is contagious."

Timm admits she is passionate about her work, and sometimes works 48 hours straight. Her biggest personal challenge has been, and continues to be, growing the business while raising three children--ages 4, 7 and 10. Still, she finds time to volunteer for her children's school activities and for international travel, cultivating and opening additional markets in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. "We need to be a global company," she says.

SMALL BUSINESS OF THE YEAR

Key West Shrimp House, Madison

Last year Scott Koerner...