"It’s just when the opportunity appears and the calling is clear for you, you should follow your dreams and jump.” – Kimberly Martinez
Fourteen years ago, Kimberly Martinez and Lisa Harrington attended a conference in California to source beads for their fledging custom lanyard business.
Martinez, who grew up in Newbury Township, had lost her job in the travel vertical after 9/11. Harrington, her sister-in-law, who was living in Cincinnati, recently had quit her job as a pediatric nurse.
They drove by a local taco stand that was so popular, cars were spilled over into the road.
“We stopped, went inside and ordered tacos,” Martinez recalled. “The system was that they called your number when your food was ready. So we ordered a couple of fish tacos and Coronas, as I recall, and when it was time for our food to be ready, the guy didn’t call our number, he said, ‘Bonitas,’ which means pretty in Spanish, ‘your tacos are ready, bonitas, your tacos are ready.’ So we looked at each and knew that was a great name.”
They did a Google search of the name and also knew they wanted to be an international company, so Bonitas International was born.
Since its founding in 2003, the company has sold over 15 million lanyards — its flagship brand BooJee Beads — and its collection has expanded to include products designed to transform functional workplace items into fabulous accessories.
In fact, the business just moved its headquarter to a much larger facility down the road in Newbury Township to accommodate its growth.
Incredible Ride
Martinez and Harrington were united by happenstance.
“I got fired after 9/11,” said Martinez, who worked at Progressive Insurance before landing her dream job in the travel vertical. “After 9/11, lost my job, part of a downsizing from a company that went bankrupt, with three kids under the age of 3. I knew my life was done in corporate America.”
From her home in Philadelphia, she spent the next six months deciding how she wanted to reinvent herself.
“It wasn’t really until I sat back and really figured out what I wanted my ideal life to look like,” Martinez said. “I knew I wanted something that wasn’t brick and mortar dependent, that was creative, that had international capabilities, that would have an e-commerce play. I had this whole list. I knew I wanted to be able to live in Florida.”
Martinez attended a holiday party at her parents’ Newbury Township home and heard about a small business her sister-in-law had created.
Harrington, who is married to Martinez’s brother, John, was working as a pediatric nurse at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center when she came up with the idea of decorative ID jewelry.
She wanted to make her boring shoelace-style ID lanyard look more exciting and fun so the children would relate to her. She added colorful beads to her lanyard.
“It just sort of took off,” said Harrington. “It kind of was viral and everybody wanted one. So, a kind of cottage business was born from that and I couldn’t keep up with demand in just my little department.”
Knowing nothing about the product world, Martinez said she stayed up all night long on Google and by the morning, had a business plan written on the back of a Christmas card envelope.
She woke up her sister-in-law, urged her to leave her job as a nurse and start a business together.
“She had the corporate insight and experience, and I had the creative side,” Harrington said. “When we met up with those two pieces, we were able to really create a great business that just continued to grow.”
Seventy percent of people who work are required to wear an ID, Harrington explained.
“So our goal is to make that fabulous and be a part of jewelry and self-expression instead of just having a shoe-string you were given in security,” she said.
The women launched their venture in Newbury Township, where Martinez and her brother grew up.
“It was born here really. Their parents, John and Gretchen Harrington, were our very first fulfillment house, in their garage,” Harrington said. “From there, we built and hired people that they knew, friends, people in Newbury, and we built our team of local people here that were just too valuable to let go and move the business, where it would be maybe more convenient to our home bases.”
Harrington still lives in Cincinnati and Martinez in Sarasota, Fla.
“But people were so important to us that we kind of built the business around our team,” she added.
Three years later, Bonitas International did $2 million in revenue.
“Women own half the businesses in the United States, but less than 3 percent ever do sales even over $1 million, so we had an instant out-of-the-box hit,” said Martinez, who serves as CEO. “I always tease (Harrington) that her creations need to save women around the world from the fashion disaster that came from wearing an ID. So, she took the bold leap and it’s just been an incredible ride.”
‘A Dream Come True’
For more than a decade, Bonitas International called Newbury Business Park home, but last week, Harrington and Martinez cut the ribbon on their new headquarters several miles east on Kinsman Road.
“We basically outgrew where we were,” Harrington said. “We got big enough to where we needed more office space and warehouse space, and we wanted to be all together as a team.”
Their new space is 65 percent bigger than their former space. It features a “playroom,” a spacious and colorful design and development area where all the graphics, design and creative work takes place.
“It’s open space leads to collaboration where our design team is able to put things out on the tables and work together, put their heads together for wonderful product development and creation, and innovation,” Harrington explained.
Across the hall is the showroom that displays the company’s numerous brands.
“We’re able to bring buyers and potential clients in here and show them the breadth of what we can offer,” said Harrington. “It’s also visually easier for us to design and work with when we can see the collection laid out, see what we might want to add in, take out, how it all looks together.”
Perhaps the most eye-catching part of the building is the front lobby, which features a bubble pattern on the wall inspired by the famous Fountainbleau Miami Beach hotel.
“It really embodied our brand and everything it says, so we’re really proud of the statement it makes on the street and people see it at night, so it kind of keeps us in the community even when we’re not here,” Martinez said.
Martinez gets emotional when talking about opening a beautiful new building in her hometown.
“I remember as a kid driving around and seeing the Frohring building and seeing what Blaine Kaufman built and John Bond, and I saw these business icons build and create something and I’d drive by and say I want a building with my name on it someday,” she said, admitting over the years they considered moving their business closer to their new hometowns. “But at the end of the day, our heart was always here.”
Martinez added, “To be able to put this type of building in this community and bring everything that it brings with us is very emotional for us. It’s really, really extraordinary for us. It’s like a dream come true.”
Bonitas International’s primary markets of healthcare, education, government, office workers and students are largely female-dominated and poised for growth.
“Anywhere there is security, which is ever increasing with all this tragic stuff happening all over,” explained Harrington. “Everybody wants identification. The market’s huge.”
The company also is looking to expand internationally and has some international sales, primarily online.
A bookstore chain in the Middle East currently carries some of their brands.
Outside of Germany and the United Kingdom, however, not as many places wear IDs, Harrington said.
“So, some of those markets we’re beginning to tap as far as getting distribution over there. It’s just a little complicated,” she added. “But there’s definitely a market there and why not, and, of course, we’re the ones to do it because we know it so well.”
Online sales account for about 20 percent of revenue, between the company’s boojeebeads.com website, which showcases all products, and Amazon.
Bonitas International employs about 15 full-time workers and a crew of contract warehouse workers who pack roughly 3,000 boxes when a Walmart order needs to be shipped. Plans call for another seven employees to be added next year, Harrington said.
“I had always aspired to be an entrepreneur,” Martinez said, adding she planned to take that leap at age 50 when her retirement was funded, her house was paid off and her children’s college paid for.
“The difference is, I lost my job and became an entrepreneur at 40, and instead I spent my last 10 years not only living my dream, as far as what I want to do, but also pursuing those same goals that I had when I would have just been an employee,” she said. “So, there’s never the right time. There are never the ideal circumstances for things to happen. It’s just when the opportunity appears and the calling is clear for you, you should follow your dreams and jump.”
