Kathleen Hotmer and Luke Tandy’s home is filled with beautiful goods and music — and so are their stores.
Kathleen owns Pink Moon Goods at 2027 E. 5th St. Luke owns Skeleton Dust Records at 133 E. 3rd St. in Dayton. The duo has been together since 2008, and married since 2018.
Luke opened his record store first, in October 2017. He carries records, CDs, tapes, audio equipment and a few books that cover a variety of genres, though he specializes in noise and experimental music.
“I constantly was hearing him say things like, I just want to open a record store, and it was just something that kept coming up,” Kathleen recalled. “There was one moment when Luke said it, and I just said, Okay, let’s just do it. You want to do it, let’s start.”
At the time, Kathleen worked in the theater department at Sinclair. Within a couple years, Luke would inspire her to open her own shop, where she specializes in ethically manufactured home goods.
“I never really felt like I was a theater person,” Kathleen said. “So I think that always kind of left a door open that made me feel like there was possibly something else for me that I wanted to do.”
For Luke, the seed was planted during an intro to entrepreneurship class in college. For his final project, he imagined opening a record store. The idea lingered.
“We went to Europe in 2012, and I specifically remember going to a store in Berlin. It was unlike any store I’d ever seen before,” he recalled. “It was incredibly unique, and just a very special store. And that moment was super inspiring to me because I was just thinking, I can make my store however I want to make it. It doesn’t have to be a certain way, it can just be my own creation. And really it was that moment that I was pretty dead set on ultimately opening my own record store.”
Check out Kathleen & Luke’s full story in the latest episode in our I Am an Entrepreneur series.
Curious about vegan treats? Camille Hall has the hookup.
Leerah’s Vegan Treats, named after her grandmothers, offers plant-based eats and treats both online and via her new food truck. We recently caught up with Camille to learn more about her journey.
My name is Camille, I am a Springfield, OH native, and I own Leerah’s Vegan Treats LLC.
I started my business in 2019 when the idea came to me while writing on a vision board. I started by learning about the vegan lifestyle and testing plant-based recipes, finally landing on a brownie recipe. From there, I started selling my brownies at local markets and by special order. In 2022, I launched my website and offered nationwide shipping for my brownies. Today, I offer a variety of vegan food and desserts that I sell from my food truck, as well as special ordering options for individuals and organizations.
Fresh whole food meals were few and far between. I wanted to provide plant-based food and dessert options for customers in my service area. Additionally, I wanted to start a business in honor of my grandmothers, Lela and Sarah, hence the name Leerah’s. Each had health issues such as diabetes and heart disease. I wanted to take a plant-based approach by offering menu items made with whole food ingredients that promote dietary balance.
I never pictured myself as an entrepreneur. It wasn’t until the vision of Leerah’s came to me that I considered starting a business.
Leerah’s was created to remove barriers to plant-based food access and welcomes all purchases, from strict vegans, to flexitarians, to just curious to try!
I like to think that my experience in customer service and nonprofit resource development have helped me structure the way I run my business. However, I’ve realized that owning a business is a learn-as-you-go kind of thing.
Scaling. I started off as a one-person operation, and as I grow to the next level, I’m realizing I need a team to accomplish those goals.
I love the freedom entrepreneurship allows me to feel, having something that’s my own and being able to set my own path.
Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from trying. It doesn’t have to be perfect to start.
I need help building my social media base and with driving traffic to my website.
Connect with Camille on IG @Leerahs or on FB @LeerahsVeganTreats
Lunnie, a trailblazing postpartum intimates company based in Dayton, is excited to announce its new partnership with Kettering Health to provide nursing bras to moms in need. This groundbreaking collaboration is set to empower and enhance the postpartum experience for countless women in the Dayton community.
One of the most common problems for breastfeeding mothers is leaking breastmilk. Lunnie’s innovative nursing bra contains leakproof, sewn-in pads that are up to 6x more absorbent than competitors, according to lab testing conducted by the University of Dayton engineering department. The bra is currently patent-pending.
Kettering Health is distributing Lunnie bras through the First Steps program located at Kettering Health Washington Township.
“I know firsthand the importance of a good nursing bra for new moms,” said Katy Boyd, Lactation Consultant at Kettering Health. “Our moms who received the Lunnie bras are thrilled. They feel more confident wearing a bra that is both functional and flattering.”
This partnership is a testament to Kettering Health’s dedication to supporting new mothers during the crucial postpartum period, as well as their initiative to support local, women-owned businesses. Through this collaboration, Lunnie aims to ensure that moms in need have access to the highest quality nursing bras to improve their breastfeeding experience.
“I absolutely love my Lunnie bra,” shared Katelyn Clark, mom of two and recipient of a gifted Lunnie bra. “It is supportive and so comfortable. The bra has given me confidence in the way I look and feel. I can wear it all day with no leaks. It is also so convenient when breastfeeding in public.”
Sarah Kallile, Founder and CEO of Lunnie, expressed her excitement about the partnerships, saying, “I am very grateful to have the support of Kettering Health behind Lunnie. New mothers deserve the very best. As a mom to 3 daughters under age 5, I have given birth at Kettering which makes this partnership even more meaningful.”
In addition to these charitable giving programs, Lunnie’s nursing bras will be available for purchase at Kettering Health’s First Steps gift shop in 2024. Nursing bras are a HSA/FSA eligible expense.
By Te’Jal Cartwright, Founder, What’s The Biz
The Holidays are approaching quickly so here are a few of my favorite Black businesses to splurge at for gifts!
One of my favorite things to do is make gift baskets full of Gem City Market goodies. I like to stuff my basket with JW Wine, a few tasty snacks, and baked goodies. There’s also a cute space dedicated to local entrepreneurs. You can grab a few of their items and add them to your basket.
Give the gift of healing: The HeArt has so many services that cater to your mind, body, and spirit. Check out their calendar and purchase a session for a loved one.
After 5 is one of the most stylish boutiques in Dayton. The love and care that Erin puts into her business is evident and shows in each item.
Jars by Jaz has some of my favorite desserts in a jar. My personal favorites are the banana pudding jars and the strawberry cheesecake!
Grab some art from local artists like Jamaal Durr, Daria Love, Dave Scott, Taliaferro, Danielle Flowers, and so many more. You can never go wrong with a custom piece to mark a moment in your life.
Lerah’s vegan treats has an amazing vegan cookbook that you can purchase and give to a loved one.
Invest in a swaggy gift from the Chipmunk Chronicles. This nostalgic attire is good for anyone who has a deep love for the tv show “A different World”
Pay for a membership at the Westside Makerspace for a loved one that you consider to be crafty!
Don’t forget about the kids! You can grab books from local authors like Whitney Barkley, Kwaunisha Moore, and Henry Benton iii
Craft a custom piece with the help of Gem City Laser! They have all sorts of wonderful items like coasters, vinyl record holders, keychains, and more.
Bonus: You can also purchase luxurious body care products from places like Unique Aromas Natural Products and Renew by Royale.
These are just some of the businesses that I have experience with but you can always go to shopblackbizdayton.com for a complete list of Black-owned businesses to shop at! And be sure to check out episode 3 of What’s the Biz to learn more about how you can contribute to the success of Black-owned businesses in Dayton!
Launch Dayton is thrilled to partner with Te’Jal and her team to produce the final season of What’s the Biz. Check out Ep. 1, Ep. 2, and Ep. 3 today!
Longtime gamer Fred Webber and his cofounder, Larry Webber, are tapping into AI to make their favorite past-time more accessible for all.
Their company, WarpTable LLC, enables folks to play collectible card games remotely so distance from friends, crap weather, or personal mobility need not restrict anyone’s fun. And a crowdfunding campaign for the software is coming in January!
The duo tapped into the Launch Dayton network through Launch Dayton Startup Week and the Entrepreneurs’ Center’s ESP program, which provided them with mentorship, marketing and legal support.
We recently caught up with Larry to learn more about their entrepreneur journeys.
We are Fred and Larry Webber. Our company, WarpTable LLC provides a service where people playing collectible card game can play remotely. People love to play games but sometimes they cannot travel to where they can play. It may be due to long distance, severe weather, or their personal mobility challenges. WarpTable overcomes these barriers by providing a high resolution, AI-assisted image so players can read the fine print on their opponent’s cards.
We recognized a need for people to be able to play their collectible card games remotely. Fred encountered this when he left his Ohio friends for college, and again years later when he began his military service. We are both natural problem solvers, so Fred designed a solution based on his technical expertise. After two years of development, we now have a product that is almost ready for the market.
The challenge is presenting a very clear image of the card to the remote player. Current solutions like Zoom or a cell phone-based solution can show a card, but your opponent cannot read the fine print on the card. For these games, the fine print is what explain the “special powers” of that card. This is an essential part of these games.
I always thought about it, but I needed a compelling solution to champion. Over the years, I had many great ideas, but I needed a way to leap from idea to delivered solution. Having demonstrated a limited version of WarpTable at several gaming conventions, we are confident this is the right solution.
WarpTable removes barriers. We have demonstrated it at several major gaming conventions to validate the idea. We received a lot of interest from charities supporting mobility-limited people. They want to game, but cannot easily travel to a friend’s house or a game store.
Fred is a lifelong gamer. Helping others to play is personal to him. I have many years creating and supporting business solutions in all types of businesses.
As co-founders, we each have our own strengths and weaknesses. We seek everyone’s help with our Gamefound crowdfunding campaign to hire part-time assistance to fill these professional gaps.
WarpTable is an enabler, so people have the freedom to play more often with their friends. In a sense, we bring a spot of happiness to these lives.
No one else can see the solution as clearly as you, so persist, and never let naysayers hold you back. Learn from your failures and continue trying.
Tell your gamer friends about us! Our Gamefound crowdfunding launches soon, but we need support to make the launch a success.
We will also be looking to network with local developers that have the technical skills we need to fill out the product’s full potential.
Connect with Fred and Larry by emailing [email protected].
Lisa and David Dault are the husband-and-wife duo behind Dault Pottery, LLC, creating beautiful pieces to elevate your dining experience.
The duo tapped into the Launch Dayton community when they sought out business support at the Small Business Development Center, then made their way to Launch Dayton Startup Week.
“It was amazing to get to hear from great speakers at Startup Week, and wonderful that it was free,” Lisa said.
We recently caught up with Lisa and David to learn more about their journey.
We’re a husband-and-wife team growing a pottery business in the Dayton, OH area. We love helping everyday folks and companies find unique and beautiful pottery to make their drinks and meals a little more special.
Lisa needs to create and was going crazy as a stay-at-home mom. David got her some clay to sculpt with, and we started our pottery journey.
We love the idea of a business that: 1) is a creative outlet for us, 2) can be a home-based small business, and 3) helps us get our kids involved and teaches them about business.
Not necessarily. We gradually grew into it over the past nine years.
It was a bold step for us to quit a stable office job to have an art-based career with a family of seven (we have five daughters).
Lisa (the main potter) has been honing her craft for almost a decade. During that time, she has refined her voice and style.
David (the support crew and details guy) has six years of experience helping to run a small business for Lisa’s father (a dentist in downtown Dayton).
Those combine to set us on a good foundation for business success.
Getting along as husband and wife business partners! We’re still working out how to make decisions together and what roles we both need to play.
It gives us the ability to create and share beauty with our community, be present and intentional parents, and share so much of life together.
Don’t give up! Find wise counsel and folks who can help you on the journey.
Promotion! We’re getting our name out to businesses in our community who might need branded mugs or artistic pottery.
Connect with Lisa and David @daultpottery on IG + FB.
We’re making it easy to shop small and support local startups this holiday season with the Launch Into The Holidays Gift Guide!
We’ve broken this year’s guide into a few categories to help you find the best gifts for everyone on your list.
Plus, jump over to the @LaunchDayton Instagram account to meet these small business owners all month long.
Are we missing your favorite small businesses? Any local business owner can sign up to participate — Tell them to jump into this year’s campaign!
The last episode of What’s the Biz premieres tomorrow, and I can’t help but reflect on the journey of building a show from my passion.
What’s the Biz with TJ started as a hobby. I moved back home when I was 24 and discovered so many Black-owned businesses that I loved. I wanted to build community through sharing the stories of Black entrepreneurs, so I grabbed a friend’s camera and created my own talk show.
It was fun. I knew just enough to be dangerous when it came to the camera and video editing. In the first season, I got my point across and connected with the community and Black business owners all over Dayton.
Fast forward four seasons later, and I feel so much more pressure than I did when it was simply a hobby of mine. I sometimes miss the days where I would go to interviews just for fun. Although I’m extremely grateful for the opportunities that What’s the Biz has brought my team and I, I’m not sure if I’ll ever turn a hobby into a business again. And here are my three reasons why:
Sometimes it’s best to leave your passion as that — a passion. Enjoying your passion without stress of making income from it is priceless. There is no amount of money that can replace the joy that you feel when you do something you love. Don’t let capitalism force you to turn your hobby into a business. Listen to your gut. How do you feel?
When WTB was just a hobby, I didn’t have to worry about deadlines, tax forms, community input, or over-committing. Once WTB became a business, I started to drown in responsibilities rather than the joy that I got from meeting new people and getting their stories out to the community. I always rave about a team and collaboration, but there are some management experiences that aren’t so fun. Saddling my passion with these responsibilities decreased my joy for production and media over time.
There is a huge difference between skill and passion. I am naturally skilled at connecting with strangers and sharing stories because I am genuinely interested in other people and get excited about different perspectives. When I became a story coach and co-owner of Lore Storytelling, I never felt pressure. It feels like an easy party when I’m doing workshops, and I don’t feel completely stressed when I have to handle the back-end work of Lore. I am passionate about production and media, but it doesn’t come easy to me, and I like that. I just enjoy the opportunity to take the things that live in my brain and translate them to the screen. My passion has the opportunity to breathe and grow when money isn’t tied to it. I truly feel the difference when I pull from skill to provide for my family than when I pull from my passion.
There are so many great things that came from What’s the Biz. I built a strong foundation in entrepreneurship, got to connect with amazing people, and have a platform that so many people recognize as a contributing factor to the growth in Dayton’s Black economy. I don’t take that for granted. I just want to be transparent, because I don’t think we talk about this stuff enough. I’ve discovered that production is an art for me. I’d rather create visuals solely for fun and let financials come second to my joy. Is that something that you can relate to?
Launch Dayton is thrilled to partner with Te’Jal and her team to produce the final season of What’s the Biz. Check out Ep. 1 and Ep. 2, and stay tuned to socials and our newsletter as episodes drop!
Turtle Up founder Corinne Brion is teaming up with University of Dayton students to launch a Kickstarter for a turtle tracker with huge potential impacts for conservation.
“What people don’t realize, particularly in states where we don’t have them, is that sea turtles play a major role in sustaining ecosystems both in the ocean and on land,” Corinne said. “They’re older than dinosaurs, and we need them.”
The Olive Ridley turtle is a species that visits Ghana in droves. But there is currently no tracker specific to them on the market, so conservationists lack data to effectively support them, Corinne said. With better data, scientists can protect key turtle habitat and nesting sites, manage fisheries to reduce accidental bycatch during turtle migration windows, and more.
This semester, a team of UD engineering students developed a tracker for the Olive Ridley turtle. And where existing satellite-based turtle trackers run about $5K each, the students project they can build this new turtle tracker for only $300 each.
Another team of students has developed the Kickstarter, which will cover costs to protoype the new device.
“There’s no planet B, and we all have a role to play in conserving and preserving our plant and repairing the damage we’ve caused over the years,” Corinne said.
On land, turtles feed the dunes, preventing erosion. In the ocean, they feed on jellyfish, which prevents them from overrunning coral reefs. Eating jellyfish also prevents the jellyfish from decimating local fish populations that coastal communities rely on.
If the Kickstarter is successful, students will build a prototype device next semester and test it in Ohio. Then Corinne and her team will take it to Ghana to test over the summer.
Be part of the climate change solution — back the Kickstarter here by Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024!
Gabrielle Little grew up baking rum cakes with her grandmother. But as an adult, she realized she never saw rum cakes at the grocery or at her local bakery. So she launched her own — The ScRUMptious Dessert, your one-stop shop for gourmet rum cakes.
“I didn’t know I wanted to be a baker when I was kid,” she said. “I’ve always baked things, that’s what the gifts were for Christmas.”
It was her grandmother who suggested she go to school for baking and pastry.
“It sounded like clown college,” Gabrielle recalls with a laugh. “I did not know that was a thing.”
She did know that she always wanted to make her own money.
“I knew I always wanted to create my own time, but I didn’t know what that looked like,” she said. “I would make my own money by selling candy in high school, I cut grass, I did things around the house, anything. As I got older, it turned into trying to figure out what a business would look like. I want our lives to be ours and not someone else’s.”
The first step was letting go and what she imagined a bakery business had to be.
“I had to accept that, I don’t mind making a gorgeous decorated cake, but I don’t have the mental to sit there. The tediousness of it was not me,” she said. “But creating a new rum cake flavor? It was awesome! I can do this all day long! And then people were requesting flavors, so now I had the opportunity to change.”
“That’s why I love it,” she added. “It allows me to just be bubbly and be happy and spread the light when there is so much darkness in the world right now.”
Check out Gabrielle’s full story in the latest episode in our I Am an Entrepreneur series.
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