Spokanes Sarah Gilcher says shes got the ideal survival product for women on the go. Its called the Safety Girl Roadside Emergency Kit, and it combines practicality with pleasure, including, among other items, instructions to change a flat tire, aromatherapy oil to relieve headaches, and a stash of the most vital stress-relieverchocolate.


Gilcher, a new entrepreneur, and her husband, Jerod, sell the kit through a company theyve formed called Safety Girl.


I didnt have any idea how much work would be involved in owning a business, she says. Now, my worry has become, Can I supply the demand? rather than Will I get enough business?


The kit is a compact aluminum, pink-and-white-checkered tin that looks like a lunch pail and is packed with items ranging from a small blanket, bandages, antiseptic wipes, and a candle and matches, to health and beauty supplies, such as a nail file, sewing kit, and spot remover wipe.


Other items in the kit include instructions on how to jump start a dead battery, a water bottle, a pencil, an accident record form, and an emergency contact list that contains entry spaces for a spa, a therapist, andspeaking from the kit buyers perspective someone who thinks Im brilliant. Also included in the kit are breath mints, deodorant, skin cleansing wipes, lip moisturizer, tampons, and an eyeglass lens-cleaning tissue.


Safety Girl was assembled in Vancouver, B.C., until last November, when Gilcher bought the assets of a separate company from owners Kim Barker and Paul Kane and started assembling the kits in the basement of her grandparents house in north Spokane. Safety Girl holds trademarks in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, she says.


Gilcher heard about Safety Girl through a friend who advertised the product on a Web site. She contacted Barker, who was planning to sell the business, and decided to buy it as a way to help support herself and her husband financially while hes in school.


Gilcher uses Mailstream USA Inc., of Spokane, for order fulfillment and rents about 400 square feet of space in that companys warehouse at 1620 E. Houston. Her suppliers include national concerns, as well as a local supplier, called Balm of Gilead, that she added when she moved Safety Girls operations here. She plans to talk to other local suppliers about including their merchandise in the kit.


Barker and Kane founded Safety Girl in Vancouver in December 2003, and sold about 10,000 kits in the first year, Gilcher says. In the first two months that Gilcher owned the business, she sold 450 kitsboth wholesale and retailto customers in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, she says.


Gilcher expects that volume level to rise quickly, and hopes to sell 15,000 kits this year. Safety Girl kits are priced at $29.95 each or $18 apiece wholesale. Theyre sold online, in boutiques, and even in automobile dealerships nationwide, and she says shes talking to stores here about selling them. She says she also plans to hire a couple of employees next year to handle projected growth.


The kit is marketed as a spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down, because it packages popular feminine items in a stylish container designed to get women to put an emergency kit in their automobiles. If a list of customers from around the world and international media attention are any indication, the marketing strategy has worked.


Safety Girl has been featured on the Entertainment Tonight television show, MTV Canada, the InStyle.com Web site, and in The Oregonian newspaper, Gilcher says. Within the first week of its debut in 2003 it was chosen to be included in the official gift basket for the Peoples Choice Awards, a popular awards show. One of its more famous customers is Maria Shriver, who bought two of the kits at a boutique in California, Gilcher says. The woman who sold those kits to Shriver told Gilcher she wants more because her boutique already is sold out of them.


Gilcher says Safety Girl also will be showcased in the Italian edition of Marie Claire, a popular fashion magazine, and the producers of supermodel Tyra Banks new talk show have expressed interest in featuring the kit on the show.


All of this publicity has come a bit sudden to a woman who graduated from Gonzaga University a couple of years ago with a bachelors degree in art. After graduating, she says she dabbled in Web design and taught art lessons, but liked the idea of owning her own business.


Ive always had a dream of being an entrepreneur, and now its finally becoming a reality, she says. I had no idea what I was getting into, though, so its been a huge learning curve.


She says the Spokane office of the Washington Small Business Development Center has helped her build up her business, and Barker also continues to provide input.


Theres a good business network of people here who are willing to help, she says. Its better to stand on other peoples shoulders than to try to start afresh.


Gilcher has encountered some problems, however, since moving Safety Girl from Canada. She hasnt been able to incorporate the business here yet, because of complications in changing it from a Canadian to a U.S.-based enterprise, although she plans to complete that soon. Also, shipping complications have arisen when shes tried to order products from Canada, and switching to local suppliers has been difficult at times, she says.


A lot of the suppliers give me a good price, though, because it gets their products into the hands of their target market, she says.


Most of Safety Girls customers are mothers who buy kits for their daughters or women who buy them for their co-workers, Gilcher says. She also has wholesale clients who have bought up to 25 kits at a time, including a California auto dealership that gives them for free to women who buy its cars.


Gilcher ships the kits mostly to customers in Washington, California, and Utah. She recently sold kits wholesale, though, to a boutique in New York and is waiting to see how theyre received on the East Coast.


One woman asked Gilcher when her kit would arrive in the mail, because it was the only thing her daughter requested for Christmas.


The Gilchers are planning to move to Los Angeles in the spring, where Jerods going to attend seminary, but Sarah says she will keep the business based here.


Gilchers brother, David Takisaki, will handle the shipping and receiving in Spokane, and she plans to do public relations and marketing work in California, and hire a few employees to handle the assembly of the product here. After Jerod completes seminary, theyd like to move back to the Spokane area, she says.


Gilcher hopes to expand the business to include new product lines in the next few years. One of her ideas is to create a new-mom emergency kit that would include a pacifier, burp cloth, water bottle, energy bar, hand sanitizer, and nursing pads. She also is considering making a Little Safety Girl kit that would include chocolate, band-aids, and hair accessories. She says younger girls have wanted the Safety Girl kit, but so far its marketed toward women ages 16 to 35 who drive.


Customers also can order Safety Girl slippers, to which Gilcher plans to attach small flashlights in the future. She also plans to create a supplemental bag for the Safety Girl, which would include emergency equipment such as jumper cables, a whistle, and a flashlight.