Group brings together aspiring, established female business owners

NEW YORK - Denise Spencer wants to import jewelry from Istanbul. Tamar Freudmann dreams of opening a consultancy that would help businesses cater to the needs of the disabled. Melissa Milam's gearing up to launch Blue Lily, a line of organic skin-care products.

Within minutes of meeting at Ladies Who Launch, a fast growing, for-profit women's business group, these would-be moguls were trading business cards and offering each other tips.

Call it the golf course for entrepreneurial women.

Men have long teed up for business leads. Now, women who want to start their own companies have a shot at networking - but in a far different way.

Founded by two refugees from the corporate world, attorney Victoria Colligan and Columbia M.B.A. Beth Schoenfeldt, Ladies Who Launch brings together aspiring and established female business owners.

The starting point for these sessions is the "incubator," a group-therapy styled meeting, where 12 strangers each get a shot at presenting her story.

The setting is a loft-like, no-frills office space in Manhattan's garment district, where water and nothing else is served. The women differ widely in style, with some carrying Gucci handbags and wearing designer jeans, while others opt for no-nonsense slacks and boots.

Members serve as each other's focus groups. "Homework" includes critiquing a peer's project. Eight hours of incubator sessions cost $300.

At a recent meeting, Milam, the aspiring cosmetics mogul, said she's funding her start-up on her credit card and handed out photos of the packaging for her Blue Lily line.

Incubator "graduates" have the option of paying $500 for a full-year membership to join the group, giving them access to larger peer groups.

There also are discounts to girl-power events, such as a recent one at the Lotos Club in Manhattan where hundreds of women gathered to hear Stila Cosmetics founder Jeanine Lobell.

"This is designed to expand your vision and clarify your goals," Schoenfeldt told the women at a recent meeting. "Creativity and entrepreneurship are contagious."

It may sound like fluff. In fact, Ladies Who Launch doesn't teach its members any of the nuts and bolts of starting a business, such as how to secure financing. But that hasn't stopped women from signing up faster than bargain-seekers at a Saks 40 percent-off sale.

Begun three and a half years ago, Ladies Who Launch has spread to 22 cities across the country, where independent contractors pay a $6,000 license fee for the right to run sessions.

Some 150 women in New York are now members of the cheerleading-fest. Colligan and Schoenfeldt have just signed a book deal with St. Martin's press. And corporations are taking note, with Avon and Commerce Bank signing on as sponsors.

Schoenfeldt, whose past jobs include stints at cosmetic giant Clinique, as well as at do-tcom start-ups, believes the appetite is growing for this kind of service as women increasingly seek alternatives to the corporate world to better balance career and family.

"Women are starting businesses at twice the rate as men," she said rattling off a statistic from the Center for Women's Business Research.

One of the assumptions of Ladies Who Launch is that the women in the group will heat things up for each other by tipping off their friends about products they've seen during the sessions.

Schoenfeldt, herself, is a walking advertisement for her members and her office is filled with books, fragrances, and handbags made by her members.

Fashion designer Kathlin Argiro learned the power of a Schoenfeldt endorsement after the Ladies Who Launch exec wore one of her dresses to a recent big event. The payoff: Stacy London, the host of TLC show "What Not to Wear," liked it so much, she wore an Argiro dress on the "Today" show.

Elizabeth Mateo says she would be nowhere with her business idea - a networking group for Hispanic women, called Casa Naranja - without the women she met during her Ladies Who Launch sessions.

"One of the women urged me to get a press release out," Mateo said. "Another woman, a marketing consultant, gave me practical advice about how to contact sponsors and gave me the names of sponsors to contact."

That was a year ago. Now this Washington Heights native has launched her business and is looking to take it public.

"They gave me a vision of what I should be doing," Mateo said. "Nothing ignites your fire more than a group of supportive women who say, `you can do it.'"

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(c) 2006, New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.