A bothersome chore for most people is fun for professional
organizer Vicki Norris.
As a child, Norris invited girlfriends over to help organize
her family's closets. Instead of receiving an allowance for
mowing the lawn, Norris was rewarded for re-organizing the
kitchen.
So it was a natural move when she founded her professional
organizing company, Restoring Order, five years ago. But what
was once exclusively a service/consulting organization is now
taking a new direction.
The virtual company, which Norris runs from her Sherwood
home, is launching a product line of storage tools via an
e-commerce site. Norris is also mulling regional and national
expansion and is in the midst of negotiating a book deal.
Until now, Restoring Order has focused only on the service
side of organizing.
"My guess is, [e-commerce] will probably be 70 to 80 percent
of our sales," said Norris, who runs Restoring Order from her
Sherwood home.
Norris received 1,300 hits on her e-commerce site in its
first week alone. She is also working on retail distribution
through a local retailer.
Norris seems to be riding a wave of interest in decluttering.
Both Entrepreneur and Newsweek magazines have recently written
large feature pieces on professional organizing.
Newsweek noted that the number of professional organizers has
almost tripled in the past six years, to 2,400 nationwide. The
home-storage products sector is now a $4.36 billion a year
industry, the magazine reported.
Norris is one of 2,700 professional organizers across the
country, according to the National Association of Professional
Organizers.
Norris' company employs six people -- including four
organizing consultants who charge corporations $175 per hour to
create workable systems. Home-based businesspeople pay $125 an
hour, and residential customers $85 per hour. There's a
four-hour minimum for her company's services.
Typical clients are home-based accountants and consultants --
"people in the billable professions, where it's a matter of
professional survival" -- administrative assistants and,
sometimes, even CEOs and other upper-level executives. Her
business is profitable and growing.
Norris also hosts a monthly segment on "AM Northwest" and is
a cast member of a show called "Mission Organization" on Home
and Garden Television, a national cable network. Many people
become interested in her services after seeing her on TV.
That's how Jodie and Nick Rossi heard of her.
