Friday, April 16, 1999

Baskets carry woman's self-confidence

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BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        Josh and Melissa Brown's new Clermont County home, a three-bedroom ranch that builders finished last June, features a recurring decorative element that is impossible to miss:

        Longaberger baskets.

Everyone has a story worth telling. At least, that's the theory. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed. Stories appear on Fridays.

        It's all Melissa's doing. She has baskets with handles and baskets without; baskets in which the Browns keep keys and CDs and sugar and magazines and kitchen utensils; Easter baskets and umbrella baskets, and baskets for paper towels; baskets large and baskets small.

        More than mere decorations, the baskets have helped Melissa gain self-confidence.

        Melissa — friends know her as Missi — has worked 10 years as an insurance claims clerk. In 1996, she took on another job as a part-time independent sales consultant for Newark, Ohio-based Longaberger Co., which sells baskets through private home shows.

        It wasn't easy at first.

        When Melissa attended Williamsburg High School, she was painfully shy. She dreaded having to stand in front of a classroom.

        “I would make myself sick if I had to get up and give a report,” says Melissa, 30. “I hated it. It was terrible.

        “The reason I (started with) Longaberger, was kind of for myself. I didn't go to college. So it was something for me, that I accomplished.”

        But not without help, she says, from family and friends.

        “When you first sign up with Longaberger, you have to have six (home) shows scheduled,” she says. “When I first told everybody that I was going to do it, my family and very close friends booked those six shows for me, and got me started.”

        The first few home visits, her mother, Betty Goldston, went with her to offer support. “I hyperventilated a few times,” Melissa says, chuckling, “and was sweating like crazy and couldn't wait to get home. I was very, very nervous.”

        But she did it. Now 27-year-old Josh — known as Munch to friends — sees a difference in his wife of almost seven years.

        “She's much more self-confident,” he says.

        “All jobs have a purpose,” says Josh, who with his father owns Daniel's Trucking, a water-hauling business. “I take great pride in what I do. I'm not getting rich at it ... but it's a way to provide a service to my fellow human beings.”

        And baskets have been a way for Melissa to reach out to people.

        She still gets nervous, especially if she's showing products to a group she doesn't know. But she does fine. “I can get up in front of people and talk,” she says. “Now, it's fun.”

       

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