15 Gifted Women: Susan Camille Beckman Roghani
By Meredith Schwartz -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 11/9/2009
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| Shonnie Bilin |
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| Frances Gravely |
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| Isadora Frost |
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| Jenny Hammons |
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| Anne McGilvray |
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| Maxine Burton |
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| Joan Ulrich |
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| Wendy Rosen |
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| Anna Griffin |
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| Barbara Baekgaard |
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| Andrea Grossman |
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| Andrea Sadek |
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| Ande Rooney |
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| Marian Sullivan |
Founder
Camille Beckman
Ironically, Susan Camille Beckman Roghani became interested in personal care because of the book 100 Things for Boys to Do, which contained a chapter on extracting perfume from flowers. As a teenager, she made soap, tonics, blemish cream and potpourri. As a young artist, she made her painting supplies. It was a visit to the Monasteraki area of Athens, which houses perfumers' workshops, that inspired the idea for the Camille Beckman line of personal care handcrafted in small batches. The line, created for specialty shops, debuted in 1986. To provide income for local stay-at-home mothers, the rosebuds, which top many products, are hand-tied locally. The company’s 104,000 square foot facility, 20 minutes outside Boise, ID, is heated and cooled by a natural artesian well. In 2004, the factory was awarded the Better Bricks Award for the Pacific Northwest. Susan also founded the Camille Beckman Foundation, which gives to underprivileged children and the elderly at home and abroad.
Gifts & Decorative Accessories: What have your biggest challenges been?
Susan Camille Beckman Roghani: The largest challenge has been competing against foreign outsourced labor, trying to be an American-made company. Because you can do everything in the world with cheap labor.
G&DA: What have been your greatest successes?
SR: The biggest success has been forming a foundation that does things all over the world.
G&DA: Do you think that as a woman you approached doing business differently?
SR: Yes, I know so. I don’t want to alienate any man, but men think a little bit differently and often they structure the offices differently. Women are used to juggling so many jobs that it stays in place in the workforce. They don’t think of assigning it to someone, they just roll up their sleeves and get it done.
G&DA: How has being an executive affected your personal life and relationships and how do you deal with it?
SR: Probably no differently at all. People are always amazed that I am executive. I am really ordinary, and that is how I prefer to be, quite ordinary. I do get invitations to do too many things. It is a stress level; you have 20 or 30 times the pressure that a normal human being has. Many times you wish you could just escape for one month, but then it would compound at the end of the month, I’m not really a great organizer; maybe if I had been right-handed ….
G&DA: How and why did you get into business?
SR: It is everything I love; it really encompassses everything I like to do. There is never even a drop of a moment that I can be bored with this company.
G&DA: What advice would you give to a woman starting out in the business?
SR: My advice would be to choose something that is extremely needed. It is tough starting a business today. I don’t think I would advise someone to go large. I would say keep your sanity, do a small business and just enjoy it. It was so easy 10 years ago; in 2000, everything changed. At that point there was a huge shift, even in our industry. In 2000, the British released their rights over in China and our industry changed like day and night. And then there was a whole series of little faux pas that happened along the way: first there were dock strikes, and then came SARS and 9/11.
G&DA: What is the best — or most memorable — gift you ever received?
SR: A brightly colored weaving from Afghanistan. I have it on my wall; it is just beautiful.
To read the interviews with each of the other 14 Gifted Women, please click on their image at right.
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