Title:
Founder, president, owner, CEO and “The Queen” of Taylor Research
Education:
Natchitoches High School, Natchitoches, Louisiana; Northwestern State College of Louisiana
Age:
76.
Birthplace:
Wichita Falls, Texas
Family:
Minta, 53; Jeff, 51; Brackston, 45;
six grandchildren
Hobbies:
Swimming, gardening, reading, volunteer work
A Dread of Housework Led Susan Taylor to Be a Pioneer In the Field of Market Research
How times change. When Susan Taylor went into business 45 years ago, initially it was just as an escape from housework and boredom.
Now, the firm she founded in her kitchen has 75 full- and part-time employees, 15,000 square feet and annual revenues of about $3 million providing services to market research companies.
Taylor, 76, was honored in May when her San Diego-based business, Taylor Research, was named as the Woman-Owned Small Business of the Year by the San Diego office of the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Taylor, the self-proclaimed “queen” of the company, described how she got into the business in 1956. There was no training, since market research, at the time, was a profession for which no training was required.
Instead, she got into the field to give her something to do while her husband taught at San Diego State University.
Taylor, born Susan Louisa Jones in 1925, got her teaching credential from the Northwestern State College of Louisiana in 1947. In the same week, she also turned 22 and married James W. Taylor, whom she met at the school, she says.
“I finished college and got a teaching credential, and got married and had three kids,” Taylor says. “Moved out here when my husband was teaching out at State. It was in the ’50s, and talk about a pot full of bored faculty wives.”
At this time, Taylor was also looking to get out of household chores , something she hates to this day, she says.
Hated Housework
“I don’t even like the word ‘housekeeping,'” Taylor says. “I was always looking for some way to get somebody else to clean my house. I’d trade with the neighbors, ‘I’ll watch your kids if you wash my windows.'”
In 1956, one of her friends tried to take on market research as a hobby.
“(She) was taking this market research course, and she came by the house with a clipboard and said, ‘I’m supposed to be doing these political interviews, and I’m scared to talk to these people at the door. I’ll watch your kids if you’ll do it,'” she recalls.
Taylor jumped at the chance. At the time, market research was not well known, and she found everything about it to be new and exciting.
In a few months, it became her chosen field. She got a directory of market research companies and wrote to several of them, and the following year, she was in business, Taylor said.
“We were doing political interviews. We were testing toothpaste. We had lots and lots of test products in my house, and of course, when I started out, all my people working for me were bored faculty wives out of San Diego State,” she says.
With the money she earned doing market research, Taylor was finally able to hire someone to clean her house for her, she says.
Trendsetter
All this happened, of course, in an era when women weren’t supposed to work outside of the home. But her husband supported her, and in 1962, she opened her first office, Taylor says.
Five years later, the Taylors divorced, and she threw herself into the business full time. The company started growing rapidly, she says.
“Part of the reason it started growing was nobody else in town was doing much of it, or very little. So I didn’t have much competition to begin with. And the industry itself was growing nationwide,” Taylor says.
Taylor provided a number of services for other market research companies, including phone banks and “mall intercepts” , asking questions of shoppers.
Taylor Research also was responsible for “product placements” , going door-to-door with a sample of a new product for people to try. Sometimes, that turned out to be a disaster, she recalls.
“There was a mouth freshener that looked almost like a Hershey’s chocolate bar, the kind that had the little divisions in it, except it was this green color,” Taylor says. “You broke it apart and you chewed it up. And it was awful. We had people who’d say, ‘I lost a tooth.'”
On another occasion, the company had some liquid laundry detergent on hand. The boxes leaked, and the detergent dissolved the floor tiles in the office, she says.
That’s why Taylor rarely does product placements anymore, and never door-to-door. Other services the company no longer provide include phone banks, since cold-calling on the phone was less people-oriented, she says.
But the company has changed with the times, adding other services for its clients. Taylor Research was the first business in San Diego to have a 1-800 number installed, and also the first fax machine, she claims.
Another service Taylor added was focus group facilities. A client told her that he needed an area to hold a focus group , and that focus groups were going to be the next big thing in market research.
Focus Groups
“I went from no focus group facility, to a very basic one, and now we have seven. We have a room large enough to do mock juries that will hold 60 people, and 22 clients behind the mirror. And we have all the latest equipment; we just keep adding equipment,” Taylor says.
Taylor Research had to make a few other changes and investments in technology very recently, in the wake of Sept. 11. Since the disaster, company officials are far less likely to get on a plane and travel to San Diego to watch what happens at Taylor Research, so that translates into some lost business, she says.
“People have a much bigger fear of flying than I thought they did. And our business depends on clients flying from New York and Chicago , everywhere , to be here to conduct focus groups,” Taylor says. “To be here and watch, sit by the mirror, see what’s going on. We still get clients that show up, but not as many as before.”
However, that same fear of flying has also increased the demand for other services Taylor Research provides , teleconferencing and streaming video.
“We probably tripled our videoconferencing , at least three times more. We bought extra equipment because ordinarily, one set-up would be just fine. And now, we have two, and we’re not too sure if we’re going to need another.”
That will help keep the business competitive in the years to come. And Taylor figures, that as the queen of the company, both she and her business will be around for another 10 years or so.
“My father lived to be 99 & #733;, and he said don’t quit working until you’re at least 85,” she said. “So I have a few years to go.”
