These ladies did, and they won big bucks. Meet the winners and finalists in our VERVE-aciously Big Idea Business Plan competition, a partnership with AdvantageWest.

by Jess McCuan . portraits of Kara Errickson by Matt Rose

It was nothing if not a tall task. On April 1, we started with a digital “stack” of more than 40 business plans. There were plastic recyclers, jelly makers and a DIY dogwash. Pam Lewis at AdvantageWest helped us whittle the stack to ten, and then four judges had the toughest job: pick the best business plan of all.

The winner? Kara Errickson, creator of Skin Food, an all-organic skin salve in nifty recycled packaging.

We were thrilled that so many of you entered our contest. The ideas you sent in were clever and, in many cases, very funny. We hope, even if you didn’t win, that the competition encouraged you to spruce up your business plan (or write one for the first time) and take those first crucial steps toward getting it off the ground. Special thanks to Pam Lewis, senior vice president of entrepreneurial development at AdvantageWest, and Kathi Petersen of KP Communications. And kudos and thanks to our panel of distinguished judges: Mountain BizWorks instructor and marketing expert Marilyn Ball, owner of Asheville’s 12Twelve Marketing; Gwen Wisler, a former CEO of Coleman, the camping supplies company, now owner of the consulting company Asheville Profits; John Mark Stroud, an entrepreneur, consultant and Mountain BizWorks board member; and Kelly Johnson, a principal business banker in charge of lending and other areas for Wachovia Bank (now Wells Fargo) in Henderson, Transylvania and Rutherford counties.

1st Place
Kara Errickson and Skin Food Topical Nourishment

Her big idea: create the ultimate organic skin salve and wrap it up in eco-friendly packaging. Errickson, a 34-year-old Florida native, studied furniture-making at Haywood Community College and admits she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. “I used to be an arty hippie,” she says, laughing. But after getting a degree in industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design and spending three years working at the Environmental Bamboo Foundation in Indonesia, things became a little clearer. She wants to use both her design savvy and bamboo to create sustainable products with big impact in the marketplace.

Her heroes in the business world are social entrepreneurs like Ben & Jerry and the founders of Seventh Generation, the Burlington, Vermont-based earth-friendly paper and cleaning products company. The point, she says, is not to make a profit first and use cash to make the world a better place later. Rather, an entrepreneur should build the idea of sustainability into the core of the business at the start.

In Errickson’s case, she and her husband Tyler (and, occasionally, their adorable two-year-old Kaia) sit at a small drawing table in their extra bedroom in Waynesville designing up sleek packaging for various products. The Erricksons co-own a design firm called CoCoChi. At the brand new AdvantageWest Natural Products Laboratory on A-B Tech’s Enka campus, Errickson perfected her first batches of Skin Food Topical Nourishment, the skin salve she’ll sell through her venture, SFTN, Inc. The lotion itself is meant to be used on any body part—arms, face, hands or elsewhere—and it’s made entirely of USDA-certified organic ingredients like coconut oil, palm fruit oil and beeswax.

The cardboard packaging—which looks like a roll of quarters and works like a push-up pop—is made from 80 percent post-consumer waste. She’s in the process of developing bamboo packaging for other personal care products. Her first customer was the French Broad Food Co-op in Asheville, which signed up in April to sell Skin Food. Lately, Errickson has been ramping up. This month, she travels to a Whole Foods expo in Atlanta; she’s in talks with the grocery chain Earth Fare; and in mid-May, just after we announced the VERVE/AdvantageWest winners, CoCoChi won $2,500 from the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce.

2nd Place
Annie Martin, aka “Mossin’ Annie” and Mountain Moss Enterprises

If all plants had an advocate like Annie Martin, the world would definitely be a greener place. Martin, an Asheville native who’s had many professional lives—including a stint as a TV producer for WLOS—couldn’t be more enthused about moss. In 2008, Martin started up Mountain Moss Enterprises—which she runs from her home in Pisgah Forest. She does a good bit of public education and outreach about the uses of moss, talking to garden clubs, landscapers and students. Last year, she installed a 350-square-foot moss garden on the grounds of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Last month, she helped a class at the Rainbow Mountain Children’s School in Asheville install a moss garden in an outdoor playground.

FINALISTS (in no particular order)

N'ann Harp and Friends of Honeybees
Beekeeper N'ann Harp created Friends of Honeybees to support rapid expansion of community-based beekeeping across the U.S. and the planet. The company intends to to raise millions of dollars annually for both traditional university and emerging best-practices honeybee research programs. Harp is currently working with the Discovery Network, including How-Stuff-Works and www.TreeHugger.com to expand public awareness and participation in the solutions to the global honeybee crisis. 

Anna Warren of Jobbitz.com
With few large corporations and scarce jobs, Anna Warren saw a need in WNC for a jobs board aimed at people looking for odd jobs. Think lawn mowing and babysitting. It’s like a local version of Craigslist, and Warren says that, since 2009, she’s filled more than 900 odd jobs, an economic impact of around $300,000.

Libby O’Bryan and Western Carolina Sewing Company (Sew Co.)
Sew Co. is an industrial sewing studio that facilitates the production needs of small, independent designers and artists. Under the same roof as the 72,000-square-foot Oriole Mill in Hendersonville, Sew Co offers full-service production ranging from design/development, resourcing, cutting, sewing and drop-shipping of any sewn product, like apparel, home furnishings or artwork.

Milagros Blanco and ENAS, LLC
Her big idea: equipment that recycles plastic bottles in one step and in small batches at the source of the waste. Blanco, an environmental consultant with training in both engineering and finance, thought her machinery would be particularly beneficial in small, rural communities like those in Rutherford County.

Sarah Schomber and Jeannine Buscher of Buchi
The two women co-founded Buchi, a Weaverville company that makes kombucha tea, in 2008. Since then, they’ve become a wildly popular craft brewery that cranks out five hundred gallons of kombucha tea per week. Kombucha, an organic, non-alcoholic fermented drink, is now sold in health food stores, restaurants and bars in the Southeast and around the country.

Rachel Friel and Babee Greens
Babee Greens is a manufacturer of organic cloth diapers and relating diapering products. The business was created to provide an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional cloth and plastic disposable diapers. The company, based in Asheville, uses 100 percent certified organic cotton (made in the USA) and a cloth made of 55 percent hemp.

Maura Scarmack and The Darling Bee
Two event planners, Tara Jordan and Maura Scarmack, founded the Darling Bee last year. The company offers event design and styling services, as well as décor rental, for clients in need of props—think antique typewriters or vintage wicker furniture—for special events, photo sessions and home staging.

Felicia Lunsford and Open Box Moving Solutions
Lunsford, who is 24 and has a six-month-old son, operates Open Box Moving Solutions as an eco friendly, full-service Asheville moving company. Her crew uses trucks that run on biodiesel, eco-friendly moving and packing supplies, and they provide free box pick-up and recycling after a move. They also plant a tree for every customer.