Rhonda Lowe

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Quitting a good-paying, long-term job, even if you no longer like it, can be tough. Starting a business from scratch is even tougher.

It's a challenge that Rhonda Lowe relished. She launched Celebrations by Design, a party decoration and planning operation, three years ago.

Lowe had entrepreneurship in her blood, even as a child in Burbank. "I organized all the neighborhood kids," she says. "We would put on plays, beauty contests. We'd empty out the garage and show movies and sell candy."

After she grew up, she worked for the airlines for a few years, then started a wedding-planning business in Sacramento, where she lived with her first husband, a park ranger.

She gave that up a year or so later when he transferred to Los Banos, southeast of San Jose.

There, Lowe sold advertising for the local newspaper for 16 years and rose to become publisher, but she was putting in long, arduous hours and needed a change. The weddings of her daughters several years earlier had planted the seeds of an idea.

"I had trouble finding the things we needed for the wedding," says Lowe. She decided a one-stop-shop for all the accouterments of entertaining made sense in her community.

She'd have to do more than weddings, however. Los Banos, a town of only 29,000, was too small for her to specialize in just one type of celebration.

As Lowe envisioned it, she would sell decorations, balloons, plan parties, and rent party equipment. She'd even provide theater-like backdrops and sets for proms. Finally, she'd have on-site party rooms.

"I rented an old Dollar Store," she says. "It was 9,200 square feet, but pretty awful, filthy. There were things left behind, and the floors and ceilings were in bad shape."

She and husband, Frank, who owns a grocery store in the same shopping strip, didn't want to go into debt, so they did much of the work themselves, and she found a great contractor to handle the rest. They whipped the property into shape in three months, spending $35,000.

Navigating the building-department bureaucracy was challenging. "We had to put in handicapped-accessible restrooms, fire exits, and a sprinkler system," she says. "We had to wait for the inspectors to come out each step of the way."

Lowe also had to invest in inventory. She spent about $40,000 or $45,000 the first year on rental items alone -- 150 tables and 800 chairs, glasses and china, cotton candy and slushy machines.

Lowe continuously refines her operation. She started a newsletter that alerts customers to upcoming holidays, lists new merchandise, and heightens her store's presence. She did a customer survey.

"I got awesome feedback," Lowe says, which enabled her to better tailor her retail items. She keeps a fishbowl on the check-out counter and asks customers for advice. The best suggestion wins a gift certificate.

She learned early about having systems in place to avoid problems. "Timing is so critical," she says. "You don't want to order too early because it's costly to your business to pay out money ahead of time."

Lowe also gets televised advice -- from "The TurnAround" with Ali Velshi, CNN's small-business improvement program. "I love that show," she says.

She watches it for inspiration and tips. Among its lessons: "How important signage is," says Lowe. "How you need a logo that's dominant and conveys the message that you're not old fashioned or dated. How you need to be hands-on with the merchandise."

"Hands on" to Lowe means being in the store, seeing what merchandise excites her customers. She made mistakes at first, "Buying some things that appealed to me."

She found particularly helpful Velshi's advice to talk to three experts in the field. She similarly co-operates with other party businesses -- they often borrow rental inventory from each other when they run short -- and gets feedback from them.

Although building the business has not been easy, Lowe loves it.

In her first year, a customer asked her if she could do a quinceanera, the special 15th birthday celebration for Latinas. "Of course," she told them.

In reality, she knew nothing about the custom, but she pulled it off.

"The party was awesome," she says, and now her clientele includes many from the town's growing Latin population.

Celebrations by Design has made much progress. Gross revenue has increased every month since launch and she expects to hit $450,000 in annual sales next year.

That sounds like a reason to celebrate.

--------------------------------

Another entrepreneur, Jeffrey Neal, is making a career out of treating "road rash." Click here for more.

The Lewises traded staid careers in Minnesota for exciting ones in Costa Rica. Click here for their story.