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Larry Plesent
Founder of Vermont Soapworks
Middlebury, Vt.
Moving into a bigger space has long been a priority for Larry Plesent, founder of Vermont Soapworks, a company that makes natural household and personal products.
Plesent rented a space in Middlebury that was more than twice the size of his old one, and planned to move his entire factory and store to the new location. But when business started slowing down last year, he decided not risk a total move.
"October is usually our busiest month of the year, and when we finished that month down over 60%, everybody held their breath," says Plesent about last year's sales.
Instead, he was able to negotiate a partial move. Vermont Soapworks is now renting 8,000 of the 20,000 available square feet in its new building, at only a quarter of the cost.
The three large soap-making machines that are up and running in the new space have already helped Plesent increase production capacity.
Business is slowly picking back up, and Plesent hopes to complete his move one day. Eventually, he'd like to buy out the space -- which was an incentive for the landlord to be flexible on the terms of the deal.
"We are all trying to stay alive, so we all work with each other," says Plesent, who has about 20 employees. "If [the landlord] had held our feet to the fire, I don't think we would be having this conversation."
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