Timm turns cottage industry into entrepreneurial success

Thursday, May 22, 2014
Successful Putnam County entrepreneur Mark Timm of Bainbridge, addresses an Ivy Tech Community College audience Tuesday afternoon on the Business and Entrepreneurial Services Center speakers program. Timm is president and co-founder of Cottage Garden Inc.

Having a great idea isn't quite as important to a successful business venture as being great at your idea.

That was the logic and philosophy dispensed Tuesday afternoon by Putnam County entrepreneur Mark Timm, co-founder and president of Cottage Garden Inc., a multimillion-dollar business headquartered in Bainbridge that ships personalized gifts like music boxes and photo frames out of its warehouse facility in the old Kroger building on Greencastle's north side.

Speaking to an audience at Ivy Tech Community College in Greencastle as part of the Business and Entrepreneurial Services (BES) Center speakers program, Timm said the story of Cottage Garden's success is steeped in that wisdom.

"You don't have to have an incredible idea," he suggested. "You have to be incredible at your idea.

"That's the story of Cottage Garden," Timm added. "You simply have to be great at your idea."

In a business he started out of his garage in 1996 and saw double in growth each of the next six years, Timm told the group he began by selling "really cheap photo frames."

"Actually they were beyond cheap," he admitted, "but we put the right sentiment inside them, shipped every product quickly and offered extraordinary customer service."

The South Putnam High School product, a former national president of Future Farmers of America, said "doing business great was a big part of the success" of his gift industry venture that started with an idea of supplying retailers rather than running a retail business.

By shipping fast and never back-ordering anything, Timm found that retailers readily beat a path to his door.

In 2007, Cottage Garden was named the Indiana Small Administration Business of the Year and finished as the National Small Business of the Year runner-up.

Although his company has evolved into the gift industry's top seller of musical gifts like music boxes, Timm said he learned the award wasn't based on his bottom line or sales volume.

Those state and federal honors, he said organizers told him, were the byproduct "how you do business."

And that "how" includes not only being great at your gifts and being grateful for your gifts but giving back as well, Timm said.

That giving back, he said, "doesn't have to be a big thing."

A smile or words of encouragement, Timm said, can "let people know they have value."

Some of the gift items available through Cottage Garden, the Bainbridge-headquartered company owned by local entrepreneur Mark Timm, are displayed during Timm's appearance at Ivy Tech Community College, Greencastle.

"People, purpose and passion" are key ingredients, explained the entrepreneur who resides in Bainbridge with wife Ann and their six "Timm Bunch" children, Markus, Kavyn, Zachary, Mary, Cassandra and Grace.

Those gifts for which a businessperson should be eternally grateful, he said, include customers, staff and co-workers.

That was never more apparent to him than on a sultry July day in 2003 when the defining moment of Cottage Garden emerged, Timm related, and his staff became family and his business took a backseat to human drama.

Timm was away on business in Atlanta, talking on the phone to wife Ann when she mentioned how strange the weather had become and how it went from windy and threatening to dead calm.

A Hoosier farm boy at heart, Timm knew exactly what that meant. Into the phone he instructed, "Oh, no, get to the basement."

In response Timm heard a blood-curdling scream just before the phone went dead.

An F2 tornado struck the Timms' home west of Bainbridge, sending beams from a nearby barn "through the house like missiles." Debris from the roof rained down upon the interior, supports landing atop the bed where one of the youngest of the Timm Bunch had been sleeping.

"But the story wasn't the tornado," the Putnam entrepreneur extraordinaire stressed, "but what happened after."

Within 30 minutes of the storm striking the Timm house, the staff of Cottage Garden had descended upon the home, clearing debris, covering exposed areas with tarps and lending support and manpower wherever necessary or possible.

That, Timm assured his Ivy Tech audience, "set something in motion for Cottage Garden that became the defining moment for our company."

And those aren't just words written on the wind.

Instead they convey something Timm believes could not have happened without the people, purpose and passion elements of the business sense he prescribes.

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