About

Karen Wylie is the author of Backroads Business. She is also an entrepreneur and co-owner of The Blue Ridge Soap Shed, a handmade craft and tourism business located just off The Blue Ridge Parkway in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

Since 1998 Karen has created and marketed over 150 varieties of handmade soap to retail, wholesale and internet customers, now making twelve tons of soap and shipping thousands of orders each year. She is a lifelong educator and business consultant with advanced degrees but more importantly, as a rural small business owner herself, Karen has developed a unique perspective from the trenches of rural Appalachia.

Karen can be reached at karen @ backroadsbusiness.com

More About Karen Wylie

Karen created The Soap Shed in 1998, to put her then-retired-chemistry-professor-husband back to work. This heritage business was designed as a regional tourist enterprise to capture seasonal visitors to the Blue Ridge mountains, and takes advantage of its location just 6/10th mile off The Blue Ridge Parkway. Visitors to The Soap Shed can see soap made, attend daily soapmaking demonstrations and enjoy more than 100 varieties of soap in the retail shoppe.

Ten years after its creation, The Soap Shed also has a solid web presence, selling to retail customers in all 50 states, 27 foreign countries, and a wholesale arm that sells to more than 300 small retail and niche market businesses.

Before The Soap Shed, Karen was an academic researcher, grant writer and business consultant to traditional industries for twenty years. She holds Bachelor of Arts, Master of Education and Doctor of Education degrees, with a focus on how people learn in their work environments.

In the ‘80s her work focused on mergers, acquisitions and plant closings of ALCOA and Hospital Corporation of America, and in the ‘90s employee involvement processes like ‘quality circles’ and ‘ISO 9000’ for companies like Fieldcrest Cannon, Henredon and Ethan Allen. When her clients in the textile and furniture industries in North Carolina began closing their doors, Karen and her husband had to make the decision to either leave the mountains to follow their careers or do something different so they could stay. Creating The Soap Shed was their choice.

The Soap Shed is located in one of the most economically depressed counties of rural Appalachia, where five large furniture and three textile operations have closed since the mid 1990s. Applying traditional business school theories to small business in this setting did not work, and required Karen to develop new theories and marketing strategies to bridge the gap between classic small business models and the reality of rural small business and microbusinesses.

Karen’s challenges and successes are the basis for Backroads Business, where she explores issues relevant to rural small business owners.