Mary and Andrew Irwin of Fahler, Alta., are part of a million-person statistic.
More than one million Canadians work from their homes, according to census figures from Statistics Canada – eight percent of the workforce.
For the Irwins, it was a case of necessity. Their grain farm wasn’t earning enough money to pay the bills.
The weather and prices were bad, said Mary, who came to Canada from Jamaica. Her husband immigrated from Ireland 18 years ago. They grew alfalfa and canola when they farmed.
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“We rent the land now but we intend to farm again,” Mary said.
Andrew ran a bookstore in Fahler in the late 1990s to supplement their income. However, he closed the store in 2001 so that he could find a higher-paid job.
Mary said he kept a piece of the business to operate at home – children’s books that are personalized with the child’s name, age and address.
“Recently I became unemployed and saw potential for developing this home-based business,” said Mary, who now manages it.
She works evenings five days a week, contacting customers by phone and internet and taking orders. Andrew prints and binds the books in their home. They are mailed within 48 hours from the local post office, which Mary said “is pretty reliable.”
The Irwins first saw the customized books when their children, who were five and six at the time, received them as gifts. The two are now teenagers and have outgrown the books, which are geared for newborns to eight-year-olds. The Irwins also sell personalized CDs.
“I believe in education and see these books and music CDs as a great tool to promoting early reading in children,” Mary said.
“My plan is to make this business self-sufficient and to have it developed to a stage where it can replace the off-farm income and we can both dedicate our time to operating our farm and working in our business from home.”
The book business is profitable because it is home-based, she added. There is no overhead and the internet has made it easier to advertise.
Statistics Canada agrees.
“Innovations in information technology in the past decade or two appear to have affected home-based workers more strongly,” it said in a report.
“Use of the computer, e-mail, internet and telephone for work purposes was much higher among home-based workers than among those who worked completely outside the home.”
For more information, visit www.personalizedbookscanada.com.
