SALT LAKE CITY — Mary Craft’s first steps into the business world started small.

“I thought only about survival, and how I can feed my children and how I can be off welfare,” Craft said. “This (is) my wagon story, around my neighborhood with two little babies in it, selling cookies and bread to my neighborhood.”

From that beginning, her business, Culinary Crafts, is now one of the largest catering companies in the state.

“Once I moved past survival, I realized the skill set that I was developing and all the possibilities that were open, and eventually, then I ran my company as CEO for 35 years,” Craft said.

Hers was just one of the success stories highlighted on Wednesday as Utah business leaders celebrated National Women’s Entrepreneurship Day at the Salt Lake Chamber in Salt Lake City. Women’s Business Center of Utah introduced a one-year statewide commitment proclamation calling on businesses, individuals and government entities to complete 10 specific action items within one year.

“We’re here today to officially recognize the incredible value of women-owned businesses,” said Anna Marie Wallace, director at the Women’s Business Center of Utah.

Leaders noted that women-owned businesses generate $14 billion in annual revenue and employ more than 89,000 Utahns.

“I wanted to highlight that women-owned businesses in Utah now comprise 44% of all small business owners, which is an increase from 31% in 2020,” said Susan Madsen, a Utah State faculty member and director of the Utah Women and Leadership Project. “There are nearly 130,000 women-owned businesses in Utah, with about 90% reporting no additional employees, so that’s quite different from men.”

She cited fair access to financing, mentors and the lack of awareness in business training and resources as some of the challenges women entrepreneurs in Utah and across the country face when starting a business.

“It’s important to note that these are not just hobby businesses,” Madsen said. “For most of these women, these businesses are supporting families and paying for housing, food and other critical costs.”

County Councilwoman Laurie Stringham, who works with Utah State University’s women’s advocacy initiative A Bolder Way Forward, discussed current economic factors.

“We’re having to deal with a lot of issues and a lot of cuts in government, and those who it impacts most right now are women and children and single parents. We have a lot of those here in Salt Lake County,” Stringham explained.

The county is not implementing additional programs, according to Stringham, but is using available resources to generate momentum for some of the initiatives the proclamation calls to action.

Comparing the proclamation to a steam engine, Stringham emphasized that the initiative is “not just for women and girls.”

“By solving problems for one group, we uplift everyone,” she said.

Angela Brown is the publisher and owner of SLUG Magazine and founder of Craft Lake City. She said she felt “out of place” in her community growing up in Utah and credits SLUG Magazine for helping her find connection and acceptance by meeting like-minded individuals.

After working as a photographer and music editor for the magazine, Brown eventually took over the magazine and has been running the company for 25 years.

“It’s the way men do business versus the way women do business. And I think it’s not that men don’t want to support women entrepreneurs, but they don’t have access, so they don’t know how,” Brown said. “Socially, men will do business on the golf course and women aren’t necessarily in those spaces or those places where some of those conversations happen. I think it’s about men realizing that and doing some work to step outside of those places or invite women to those spaces.”

She’s made it her life’s mission to empower people in the community to become creatives and entrepreneurs.

One of those entrepreneurs is 23-year-old Seurette Relyea, who grew up in Sandy and works as an executive assistant at Craft Lake City.

Relyea started her own business, Curio, at age 19, hand-painting homemade calendars in small batches. She recently reached her goal of selling 100 calendars and conducts most of her business through Instagram.

“I think I’m the youngest one in the room here, but it’s really empowering to see a very powerful group of women come together and support each other and uplift the creative business owner community here in Utah,” said Relyea.

The proclamation introduced on Wednesday calls on people to support women in business by taking the following actions:

  • Buying from three women-owned businesses.
  • Mentoring one woman entrepreneur for a minimum of three hours.
  • Promoting a woman-owned business.
  • Sponsoring or donating to an organization that supports women entrepreneurs.
  • Advocating or implementing policies that reduce barriers for women.
  • Referring a woman-owned business for a funding opportunity.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.