Business with purpose perfected at Artful Home

Toni Sikes, founder and chief executive officer of Guild.com, understands the power of purpose. Through choppy seas, the Madison company remained afloat because of Sikes' inspiring and deeply held purpose for being in business.

Guild.com's purpose has two inseparable parts: first, to help artists make a better living through their art; and second, to help more people enjoy original art. The company's Internet site and catalogs connect artists to homeowners, gift givers, architects and interior designers.

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Like two sides of a surfboard, this purpose supported Sikes through a ride both harrowing and exhilarating. She rode the wave from struggling startup to being awash with venture-capital funding during the dot-com days. Guild.com's online art gallery promised, as many dot.com businesses did, to consolidate a highly local and therefore fragmented market. During this period, Sikes' venture-capital investors merged Guild.com with a leading Web-based seller of luxury goods. When that company failed as the dot-com bubble burst, Sikes managed to raise enough money from local investors to buy back her company.

"We were so broke," Sikes said. "All we could do when we got the company back was to hunker down and try to figure out our business. What we were really doing, I understand now, was healing and getting solid again before we could grow."

Throughout this period, Sikes said, "there was a feeling in my gut that I needed a new driving force behind what I was going to work for and what I was hanging my hat on." By listening to an inner voice demanding change, Sikes and her team created a whole new business concept for Guild.com based on ideas, not just art, that would advance art purchases more than gallery space alone could do. "After all, not everyone wants to shop in a gallery," Sikes said.

The Artful Home is Guild.com's new brand concept. Its catalog and Web site offer handcrafted furniture, lighting, limited-edition prints, sculpture, and glass and ceramic objects that become the focal point of a room or tabletop. Both shopping venues are full of ideas for where to display art and how to create a room with a truly artistic look. Compare Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn with The Artful Home and you'll understand The Artful Home's promise to help customers express their uniqueness.

Searching for a new business concept, executing against it and fine-tuning the strategy in the marketplace took considerable time. Welcomed success is finally arriving. Catalog response rates have improved and lifetime customer value, a key measure for direct-marketing businesses, increased 32 percent.

Vision is important to Sikes, who wisely knows that "just wanting higher sales is not very visionary." Her new vision - a well-known, compelling and successful Artful Home brand - shapes how Sikes does her work, how she challenges her people and the opportunities she sees.

Many consultants claim vision - where you want your company to go - is a company's most powerful force. Purpose, however, is even stronger than vision. If Sikes cared only about vision, she might have declared "Game over!" when her acquirer went broke. Instead, Sikes' purpose for starting Guild.com provided the motivation to rebuild her company on a stronger brand concept.

Your people show up every day, hearts and heads ready to turn off or turn on. What purpose and vision will inspire them? Just as important, how do you want your work to make the world a better place?