"America is built on small business. It's the backbone of our country," Ireland avers. "Fear of large mass market chains is often wasted energy. Rather than overreacting to what they do, it is in our best interest to react, without hesitation, to what they don't do."

For Ireland's operation, that boils down to spotting her competitors' weaknesses and presenting a unique alternative to shoppers. Her philosophy is not to try to imitate the big chains, but rather to emphasize the differences of her comparatively tiny operation and how those differences translate to advantages for her customers.

Because big chains are generally locked in to a merchandise assortment determined by their corporate buying teams, they cannot match the flexibility Ireland's stores offer. "As a private owner, I have a buying team that can stop on a dime, switch gears and do what is necessary to satisfy a customer's request," she points out. Since her organization is not hobbled by a hierarchical management structure, decisions can be made and executed very quickly.

The training and expertise of The Chalkboard's store personnel is another area that Ireland stresses as a competitive point of difference. Her stores carry a unique mix of products such as teacher resource books and challenging subject materials for children. These are products that require a special expertise not likely to be found among selling-floor employees at a mammoth chain store that is, if a shopper can even find an employee on the selling floor to ask for help.

ESTABLISHING AN IDENTITY

The Chalkboard also sets itself apart from mass marketers with its unique merchandise mix. For example, while chain stores tend to carry theme decorations and craft products only during the appropriate season-hearts in February, turkeys in November-The Chalkboard offers them all year long. "This is an important selling point with schools, day care centers, churches and similar organizations," Ireland notes. "They like to supply their classrooms and programs for an entire year with a single purchase order, and we make that easy for them."

Similarly, The Chalkboard carries single-color packages of construction paper, glue and washable paints in gallon containers, Boy Scout and Girl Scout uniforms, oilcloth desk protectors and other merchandise customers won't find at their local discount store or office products superstore.

Ireland's experience illustrates an important strategy for small business Davids going up against Goliaths: Rather than a frontal assault on your competitors' strengths-in this case, the pricing power provided by the big chains' volume-buying muscle-position your business on its own unique strong points.

While The Chalkboard has been in business for more than 20 years, starting out in a 1,600-square-foot location that has since been expanded to more than 16,000 square feet, Ireland was a teacher for almost a decade before she caught the entrepreneurial bug. It was in her original profession that she began developing the creative approaches to education that she would later hone into The Chalkboard's unique identity.

As a teacher of first- and second-grade students, Ireland came to believe that encouraging creativity at an early age establishes a foundation for lifelong opportunities. "The more creative the approach is, the more likely the child is to take interest," she says. "A high interest level sparks a child's natural curiosity, and that's when learning really takes place."

Ireland also believes that all areas of the educational experience are heightened by a more creative approach through the use of more creative materials. Even adults tend to recall their most enjoyable activities, and with children, what seems like play can actually be a creative developmental learning experience. "Creativity has more to do with play than work," she argues.

In the classroom setting, Ireland applied her theories about creativity in education by focusing on team building. "Children love cooperative learning opportunities," she says. "For example, my large classroom chalkboard transformed easily into a giant board game that we used for skill-based games that both educated the children and helped boost their self-esteem especially for the most disadvantaged children, who invariably seemed to emerge as the team leaders."

Throughout her teaching career, Ireland stressed similar interactive educational experiences. To teach her first-graders American history during the Bicentennial year of 1976, she orchestrated a production that the kids presented to the entire student body and parents. Each child was dressed as a historical figure (Paul Revere, for example) or place (Old North Church, e.g.) and recited a riddle on the basis of which the audience had to guess whom or what they represented.

"By the time it was all said and done, they'd memorized each other's recitations, and in the process, they really learned their history," Ireland recalls. "I would bet that some of them remember their lines to this day!"

Ireland has adopted the same approach in merchandising The Chalkboard. She seeks out products that encourage creativity not only in children, but also in parents and teachers. "Parents are their child's first teacher," she says. "Creativity is a process of teaching and learning self-expression. We need to inspire and nurture it."

Even after 21 years of retail experience in the educational and instructional materials business, she stays very involved in the product selection process and continues to tap her classroom experience for help. "I find myself previewing and selecting products by simply applying them to my real-life teaching experiences. Be it remedial or challenging, always in the back of my mind is a child who could have benefited from the array of materials available today," she says.

Ireland discovered an important fact that can be useful to all potential business owners: Skills and strategies acquired in one profession can be successfully leveraged as the basis for an entrepreneurial venture in a related field.

CUT-THROAT BUSINESS

Retailing has a reputation some would argue a well-deserved one-of being a cut-throat business characterized by fierce competition. "Macy's doesn't tell Gimbel's" is an old saying among retailers referring to the often secretive nature of what they do. However, owners and operators of educational supply specialty stores appear to have put that attitude behind them, at least to some extent, through participation in the National School Supply and Equipment Association (NSSEA).

"We are unique in that our membership is made up not only of retail store owners such as myself, but also catalogers, product manufacturers, distributors, sales representatives and consultants," Ireland explains. "The `friendly competition' that exists in the NSSEA is quite unusual."

Ireland has served on several NSSEA boards and credits her involvement in the organization with helping her advance in the business world. Coming from a teaching background, she admits she had a limited knowledge of business when she opened the first Chalkboard store in 1980. However, the NSSEA opened many doors for her and provided irreplaceable opportunities to sharpen her business skills. One result of her involvement with the trade association is that she now feels she has a reservoir of business knowledge that far surpasses what she might have accumulated on her own with her three-store chain. An added bonus is that she has developed friendships she believes will last a lifetime.

Flexibility and a willingness to change to meet and even exceed customer expectations have been hallmarks of The Chalkboard from the outset. One tenet of Ireland's business philosophy that has never changed, however, is a commitment to quality and service two things for which she says there is simply no substitute in the competitive world of retailing.

"You snooze, you lose!" is how she puts it. "Customers today are smarter and more savvy than ever before. "They look for quality and service, they expect quality and service, and they will remember quality and service."

One technique that Ireland uses to keep her and her employees on the cutting edge in that regard is to constantly look at the business through the customer's eyes. Ireland heeds the advice of one special friend who reminds her to enter through her own front door rather than the back or side entrance to enhance that perspective. She counsels her team members to look at the customer's problem as their problem, the customer's excitement as their excitement. She trains her staff to be a reflection of her values, and she maintains an open-door policy.

Ireland regularly asks herself if anyone would notice if her business were to disappear tomorrow, and she continuously takes steps to make sure the answer is yes.