A Smooth Start

by Drew Ermenc

January 28, 2008

Entrepreneurs call it the “light bulb moment;” a point in time where the idea for their million dollar concept hits them like a ton of bricks. For Adrienne Simpson, her enterprising flash came while helping her mother’s aging friends relocate to smaller homes and retirement communities, a process that originally started with her mother’s need for help during her move to Michigan. “I did it for about a year as a volunteer for my mother’s friends,” Simpson recalls. “There was this ‘ ah ha’ moment after a number of seniors were calling and saying ‘I need help.’ I thought, ‘there must be a need for this service.’” And thus, out of perceiving a need in the marketplace, Simpson’s idea soon became a reality.

In 2002, Simpson started Smooth Mooove Senior Relocation Services by borrowing from her credit cards, a risk she was willing to take to see her business off the ground. “It was very nerve wracking, but I knew there wasn’t anyone that was going to give me a loan because I was going into a industry that I didn’t have experience in,” she says.

But she was confident in her abilities and her idea. “If I can run a corporation, I can certainly come up with a business of my own …” she says. “As I reviewed my career, seniors were always my favorite customers. But I wanted to do something that no one else was doing. I knew who my customer was going to be, and it took moving my mother to find out what the service was going to be. She definitely showed me all the facets associated with it. She’s a mom. She expected me to do the packing, sorting, moving, all the things that she needed.”

So what’s the difference between her cow-loving company, located in Stone Mountain, and other competing moving agencies? “Other movers move things, I move people,” she explains. “The difference is 90 percent of the time, when a senior moves, there are in crisis. Whether it’s losing a spouse or their health is failing, when they call, they don’t say ‘I need to move in three weeks’, they say ‘I need to move tomorrow.’”

After working in corporate America for three decades, most recently as the director of operations for a large insurance company, Adrianna Simpson knew customer service was critical to the success of her small business. Included in Smooth Mooove’s plans are options to set up the senior’s bathrooms, hang drapes, medical equipment installation and a total unpacking of all boxes. “Someone from the crew will keep an eye on the senior if there’s no family,” she says. “We have a luxury van. We will transport the senior and their pet if they don’t have a way. We load the truck, bag up the trash, sweep out the garage. We are their family; whatever they would ask their family to do, we will do it.”

Now in her sixth year, Simpson has grown substantially since her first customer, earning just over a half a million dollars in revenue last year. And she has plans to franchise the concept, possibly as early as the end of 2008. “Because of the Web site and the national attention, inquiries [for franchise opportunities] are coming from all over the nation and the world: Japan, Africa.”

And the bovine theme? “When I decided to have a moving company, I went to the state to register the name as Smooth Move,” she recalls. “Not knowing that every mover in the world wants to be called Smooth Move, the name was already taken. Disappointed, I was talking with my graphic designer sister-in-law, who was creating my logo. She suggested I put a few extra ‘oo’s’ in move and see what happens. I did and was able to register the name. She then said, ‘You know since you have all the ‘oo’s’ in move you must have a cow in the logo.’ So she designed a logo with a cow.”

“It wasn't planned, as none of the business was, just a wonderful accident,” she says. “It’s been lot’s of fun playing on the cow and all the corny puns we can come up with. I have the cow on my trucks and the clients love it.” 

Although she has less free time than her days as a corporate exec, she loves owning her own business. “I saw a need,” she says. “I’m a control freak; that came from corporate America all those years. I wanted to be able to have the outcomes that I wanted. I didn’t want to work with six different companies and not be able to manage my results. And I wanted to give seniors the same level of care that I was able to give my mother.”