Entrepreneurial Spirit Sparks At An Early Age
In the sixth grade, Joya Helmuth started a business she called Write-A-Mania. With calligraphy pens from an aunt, the teenager spent her free time printing poems, charging customers 7 cents a word.
“I had business cards and brochures, and I think the grade school even let me put up posters. Entrepreneurship runs in the family,” says Helmuth, who today at 38 is still surrounded with pens, letterhead and stationery.
“For me to have my own business is a way of life.”
That business is Spark Fine Stationery, located in an old firehouse on Hill Street near downtown South Bend. The front of the store focuses on retail, with journals, paper, and announcements.
“If you can find something I carry anywhere else, you have to tell me,” the 38-year-old mother of two confides as she spins a greeting card rack inside her front door to show some unique lines.
But more than a third of her business is derived from wedding announcements, invitations, programs, placards and favor boxes that all appeal to her lifelong love of design. She also works on brochures, programs and other projects with the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College.
Helmuth recently tweaked the name of the store — formerly Spark Design Studio — that she launched as a home-based business in 1998, to emphasize the retail as opposed to the design.
“There have been so many name changes and moves for this business,” she says, noting how Spark had been located in the Commerce Center when she still had a business partner, and William Street, before moving to Hill Street in March 2007.
Logo from Spark Fine Stationery
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