Congratulations to Eight Cousins bookstore in Falmouth, Mass., which will be honored tomorrow by Cape Cod & the Islands SCORE as the Small Business Owner of the Year, the Cape Cod Times wrote. SCORE Association is a partner with the Small Business Administration that connects retired business professionals with small businesspeople.
Sara Hines, Eileen Miskell and Mary Fran Buckley bought Eight Cousins in 2015. Hines in particular worked closely with SCORE counselors during the process and talked about it at Winter Institute 2017, saying that the counselors help in a range of areas, including finance, expansion, marketing and corporate structure. Her counselors were invaluable, she said, in assisting with loan applications, making recommendations and helping her avoid useless effort. One counselor told her which bank was likely to consider the future owners' proposal, "so I tailored my proposal to her, which saved a lot of work for me."
She continues to meet with counselors, and told the Cape Cod Times, "I am just not going to stop going to them until they tell me I have to. It's a fantastic service."
Of course, she had occasion this year to use the counselors' advice for an unusual problem: in January, a flood from a broken pipe in the ceiling wrecked the store. Hines and her partners rebuilt the space and reopened last month.