Accidental Entrepreneur

By Paul Levitan

It was 1994, the beginning of the Internet era. Linda Katz, a former real estate agent living in a small town in Kansas, wanted to learn about Web design.

As a joke, she decided to create a Web site that would market an imaginary product.

"Years ago, when I was a little girl ... I was with my parents, and we saw a station wagon pull over. I asked my dad what the license plate was. It was from New York. These people took a tumbleweed and put it in the back of their car. It always stuck in my mind that, for us, they are just tumbleweeds, but for other people, they ... [are] something else."

This realization that one person's weed can be another's cherished possession is at the core of Katz's subsequent success.

Tumbleweeds are annual plants that dry up in the fall season and tumble across the landscape throughout the western United States. Also known as Russian thistle, because of their origins in the steppes of Ukraine and Russia, tumbleweeds can be as small as soccer balls or as large as automobiles. They are listed as "noxious weeds" by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a point not lost on Katz, who has an unusual sense of humor.

In western Kansas, tumbleweeds are considered a common nuisance, clogging up drainage pipes, knocking down fences and scratching cars as they tumble across the flat prairie landscape.

Katz designed her Web site as a sort of mock advertisement for a fake "Prairie Tumbleweed Farm." To complete the joke, she gave her nephews and nieces hard hats, took pictures of them gathering the tumbleweeds and listed them on the site as "officers" of the company.

"I got my sister to pose with a hard hat by telling her nobody was going to see this but us, because I did not know the power of the Web at the time," Katz said. To make her site look legitimate, she put up a price list for the tumbleweeds. She listed the site on a search engine and congratulated herself on learning how to design a site. She might have forgotten about it. She was not prepared for what happened next.

Two weeks later, when the first order came in, Katz thought it was a fluke. But she went ahead and shipped a tumbleweed, expecting for the purchaser to return it by mail.

He didn't. New orders for tumbleweeds started rolling in.

People ordered them for weddings, parties or simply to grace their homes with décor reminiscent of the western United States.

Pottery Barn, a furniture retail chain owned by Williams-Sonoma Inc., ordered 300-plus tumbleweeds for a Western motif for stores. NASA ordered tumbleweeds to use as inspiration in designing the Mars tumbleweed rover. Producers of the popular children's television show Barney & Friends and the movie Finding Neverland ordered tumbleweeds.

There are international prohibitions on sending live plants, but, since tumbleweeds are dried plants, there is no problem. Katz has received many orders from customers in Europe, Asia and Australia. The Prairie Tumbleweed Farm Web site now has a Japanese version because of so much interest from Japanese consumers.

The Swedish Museum in Stockholm has statues made of Katz's tumbleweeds dipped in bronze.

Katz said her success has meant media exposure as the "tumbleweed lady." She has been featured in Business Week, People magazine, National Enquirer, Modern Bride, the Yahoo front-page and on a number of news radio shows.

Katz is the first and the most successful, but not the only, tumbleweed entrepreneur. "Every time I come out in a magazine somebody is always trying to copy it and do their own tumbleweed business. Then, I usually send them an e-mail saying, 'Welcome to the tumbleweeds business, and I will see you at the tumbleweed convention,'" as a joke.

They write back - "What convention?"

When asked if she is worried about the competition, she laughs it off. "After all, it's just tumbleweeds."

Katz said that she hopes someday to pass on the business to her son, who recently moved back to her hometown of Garden City, Kansas, with his family.

"I am 58, so it's getting a little harder to run out after those tumbleweeds," Katz said. But when pressed, she hesitates to get specific about when she might turn over the successful business. "Not for a while," she said. "I am not that old."

More information is available on the Prairie Tumbleweed Farm ( http://www.prairietumbleweedfarm.com/ ) Web site.

Source: U.S. Department of State

judythpiazza@newsblaze.com

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