Entrepreneurship in Unexpected Places?
Entrepreneurship is a a response to something new and unexpected – an idea, a technological innovation, a lucky accident, an emergent demand. It is by nature difficult to predict, sometimes responding to a niche customer group forgotten by others. Such is the case with FLDSDress.com, the new apparel website started by women of the YFZ (“Yearning for Zion Ranch”), the community of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus that made headlines this Spring for reasons completely unrelated to entrepreneurship.
To give some background: in April of these year, Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) in April removed all children from the compound, arguing that minors were at risk of sexual abuse. CPS dispersed many of the children in foster families throughout Texas, separating them from their parents. Mothers, worried that CPS would not be able to furnish modest, FLDS-style clothing for the children, made their own clothing and set up an online store for CPS to use. The children are now out of state custody, but many of the women who followed their children to their new temporary homes have not yet returned to the YFZ Ranch, and they need to pay for rent and food. The store, then, presently serves the more practical purpose of basic sustenance for these uprooted families.
Apparently, the store is tapping into an oft-ignored demographic:
“The venture has drawn queries from across the U.S. from those seeking modest clothes for their kids, says Maggie Jessop, an FLDS member. “Our motive is not to flaunt ourselves or our religion before the world. We have to make a living the same as everyone does,” she said.”
A glance at the website reveals a selection of pastel-colored, high-collared dresses for girls, and basic trousers and dress shirts for the boys. The women say that “each piece is made with joy and care.” The site is functional, simple and attractive, revealing no hint of the controversy that precipitated it.
Regardless of whether or not you support the FLDS lifestyle, you have to admit that these women have transformed a potentially traumatic experience into something empowering. For one, they challenge negative stereotypes of FLDS women held by outsiders – namely, that such women are helpless, technologically unaware and reliant on their husbands for survival. The business venture offers the women’s religious affiliation and lifestyle choices some extra legitimacy to the greater public, as it furthers their argument that they are fully able to make their own life decisions and support themselves. This says a great deal about the transformative powers of entrepreneurship.
I thought this was a fascinating piece of news. Even though you people have divergent and conflicting perspectives on the domestic practices of the FLDS Church, you must still find it impressive that these women, in the midst of so much controversy, saw a business opportunity and took it.
What do you think of the business? Would you consider buying the clothing? Has the news changed your perception of the FLDS or of entrepreneurship itself?
