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Is
there ever a moment when Elaine Taylor-Gordon isn’t working
on at least one project? Don’t bet on it. The owner and president
of WomensBiz.US has a full time “job” running Flashforce
LLC, a four-year-old fabric business in which she’s the exclusive
US agent for high-end producers of decorative fabrics in Europe
and Asia and, as a holdover from a previous career, still does recruitment.
Within the last 12 months she has hunted and hired five heads.
“My lives converge, orbiting around a huge network,”
says the feisty redhead. “Recruiting at night and representing
mills in Europe and Asia in different time zones makes it possible
to juggle.”
Taylor-Gordon grew up juggling. She learned to read at age 3,
and sang, drew and performed from then on. Her radio career began
then, singing God Bless America on the Horn and Hardart Hour. “I
loved auditioning,” she recalls.
 Taylor-Gordon
grew up in the ‘50s, a stone’s throw from the Kingsbridge
Armory when the Bronx was green, safe and bucolic. At seven, she
walked alone 12 blocks to the landmark Alexander’s Department
Store, past Poe Cottage and its surrounding park, to buy her mother
a birthday gift. “My family was frantic and about to call
the police when I returned,” she recalls. Both her parents
were athletes, educators with Master’s degrees in education,
musicians and real estate investors. Her dad, a violinist, baritone
and pre-med student at NYU, held many records in the triathlon,
shot-put, discus, track and javelin and is in the NYU Hall of Fame
as a football great. He taught and coached at the legendary Morris
High School shepherding an unbroken win record for decades and many
protégés who went on to major sports careers.
Her mother was no slouch either. A competitor in the Olympic trials
for track and field, she played First Violin in the Bronx Symphony
for years, and substitute-taught French, Spanish and German in NYC
schools.
Taylor-Gordon went from a home filled with music to the high school
of Music and Art as an art major after skipping third and seventh
grades in New York City public schools. Her brother (now publisher
of Fabrics and Furnishings Int’l) and sister (now a successful
realtor in Scarsdale) also were selected to attend there. When Taylor-Gordon
graduated two weeks after turning 16 she went on to the University
of Vermont, where her juggling prowess bloomed.
She was social chairman of her sorority, art editor of the literary
magazine, on the debate team and in the drama club. She hosted a
jazz show on the campus radio station, created floats from chicken
wire and crepe paper, and was a finalist in the Mademoiselle College
Board Contest. She graduated from what was a dry campus at 19, never
having had a beer during all her undergrad days.
After graduation, she expected to become a fashion illustrator,
but the only job she could get was at a tiny printing company. After
six months she left for a small ad agency that created print ads.
A year later she moved to Renault-Peugeot in sales promotion while
taking courses at FIT and the Art Students League. Then, revelation
struck. “I determined that I didn’t have enough technique
to compete at the top tier and I wasn’t willing to spend the
time then to get it,” she says.
While working on a TV commercial in Paris for Renault, she fell
in love and stayed a year, singing (as the “American Lollobrigida”)
and modeling to pay the rent. Her father’s serious heart attack
brought her home. (He ultimately died of a coronary at age 69.)
Taylor-Gordon then joined a PR firm that’s now part of Manning
Selvage and Lee, and in 1969 married the man who is father of their
two daughters. That lasted seven years. “We are still friends,”
she says.
By 1973, Taylor-Gordon was running special events at Gimbels, while
mothering and working on an MBA. She jumped ship to Revlon International
to direct its sales development, and in her spare 18 minutes wrote
the Businesswoman’s Guide to 30 American Cities. That book
was published in 1982. “Another lesson learned: make sure
your publisher understands how to market,” she says. Concurrently,
she wrote a bi-weekly Male Bag column syndicated by Chicago Tribune
NY News Syndicate and restaurant columns for GQ.
By 1979 she was married again and in Houston as marketing director
of Foley’s. But her TV Producer husband was unhappy out west,
so she relocated to Connecticut as VP-marketing for Warnaco, then
to Minneapolis as VP-marketing for B Dalton booksellers, and finally,
back to New York as VP-marketing at Izod, then a unit of General
Mills. The marriage ended in Minnesota.
She was four months into the job, living in a hotel and closing
on a new home when “Mills” announced it would sell all
its non-food businesses,shattering her neatly tied-up future. “I
remember seeing a help wanted sign in a fish store and wondering
if they’d hire me,” she says. Wresting tomorrow from
possible disaster, she converted her duties into an outside assignment
and opened a consulting company. Her second client was Fortunoff.
While she loved doing everything herself, she hated the uncertainty,
so morphed the business into a more structured ad agency, Taylor-Gordon
Aarons, with partner Larry Aarons.
Their most memorable client: Leona Helmsley. But after three years
when the hotelier ambushed her with news she was slashing their
standard 15 percent commission to 5 percent—take it or leave
it—Taylor-Gordon left it, calling a press conference to announce
she was firing the queen. It was their largest account. “I
learned the extent of my intestinal fortitude and that I will never
let fear prevent me from taking risks,” she says.
Although the agency recovered and went on to launch Snapple, Taylor-Gordon
eventually burned out. In October, 1993, she sold out and became
an executive recruiter at the Kenzer Organization. She hunted heads
for seven years (at 777 Third) before being recruited by Women’s
Business New York right after 9/11. “I was actually their
second choice but No. 1 lasted all of a month,” she laughs.
WBNY’s investors didn’t last long either and in May
2003, Taylor-Gordon became in addition to publisher, president and
founder of a restructured newspaper, its funder. “I considered,
then declined outside financing,” she recalls. I needed to
make mistakes and wasn’t comfortable risking someone else’s
money. But now we’re in serious conversation with a major
entity who will give us the financial support and guidance to bring
us to the next level.”
“If I hadn’t developed self-confidence early on, I
could never have survived the bumps of being an entrepreneur,”
she says, “It never occurred to me that I ould fail,”
she says. “On the debate team, I learned there’s no
dishonor in losing if you’ve done your best. Losing and failing
are not the same thing.”
That lesson was instilled in her earlier by her 91-year-old mother,
who even now is indomitable, “energetic, vibrant, tenacious,
and determined.” Her father, on the other hand, pushed her
constantly to achieve, reminding her that in life you can’t
get along on good looks alone.
Not that
looking good doesn’t help; being a woman is a tremendous advantage,
says Taylor-Gordon. “Our natural intuitiveness and ability
as builders and jugglers make us outstanding executives for companies
that prize that,” she says.
What Taylor-Gordon
prizes most besides her two daughters, two granddaughters and her
very supportive life partner of 21 years—is the achievement
and satisfaction of accomplishment, most focused on developing WomensBiz.US
against financial odds and nay-sayers. “Nothing I did in my
corporate career was as fulfilling as providing realistic role models
and networks to help other women excel,” she says. “We’ve
touched thousands of lives with our monthly Women To Watch events
that connect businesswomen.”
Her near
term goal is to achieve enough financial success to sustain WomensBiz.US.
“We have extraordinary support from subscribers and key advertisers,
like IBM, Empire Blue Cross and Commerce Bank, have been faithful.
We’ve developed our 1010 WINS radio show and ancillary forms
of income. We’ve been blessed with a fantastic editor, Bernice
Kanner and The VanDunk Group, the design firm who acted as my right
arm.”
Of course, the buck always stops with her, so Taylor-Gordon is
doing the publishing end virtually single-handedly, working 15-18
hour days. It’s not a balanced life, she admits, but “balance”
was never a goal. “When you’re balanced, you’re
stopped, not moving. I prefer to be off balance.”
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