Roanoke's leaders often wring their hands about slow growth, but the valley may be leading a trend among female-owned businesses.

The Roanoke Valley's economy gets almost twice as much of its energy from female-owned businesses as the rest of the nation, according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

"I do believe women are making a difference in this country's economy," said Tamea Franco Woodward of Roanoke, owner of EastWest DyeCom, an aluminum-anodizing company on Peters Creek Road.

Across the nation, the number of female-owned businesses grew 20 percent in five years, the Census Bureau says, twice as fast as all businesses.

In the Roanoke Valley, more than 1,000 businesses were owned by women, and more than 9,000 people worked at them in 2002, according to the Census Bureau.

Women's business receipts that year totaled $1.3 billion, which was more than 7 percent of the Roanoke Valley's $18.4 billion in gross receipts.

Nationally and in Virginia, female-owned businesses accounted for just 4 percent of the total economic receipts surveyed for the 2002 Economic Census.

"I wanted to break through the glass ceiling" of potential earnings, said Karen Carpenter, who owns four New Fitness health clubs in Roanoke, Lynchburg and Charlottesville.

Together they gross more than $2 million per year from 15,000 memberships, Carpenter said.

On any given day, 1,000 of those members show up to work out.

"I feel like the health industry is getting nothing but stronger every day," Carpenter said, unswayed by the fact that health clubs come and go.

Like most of the other women entrepreneurs, Carpenter found it hard to obtain loans from banks. She eventually borrowed from a financing company that specialized in health-club loans and charged a 2 percent higher interest rate than banks were setting for conventional loans.

It takes a risk taker

"I wanted to do something different and bring something different to downtown," said Jennifer Jones. She and her mother, Rachel Noel, own Noel & Jones Clothing Co. in Roanoke.

"It's not that hard to manage a small store. It's like a natural thing," said Jones, who carries an $8,000 inventory of women's and men's clothing in the store at 118 Campbell Ave. S.W.

Jones' approach to business might be defined as "no fear."

"I'm a risk taker," she said. "I like to work for myself."

There are ways around obstacles in business, she said. Banks won't lend to startup businesses; they prefer borrowers who have at least two years in business along with some material assets, Jones said.

Her mother provided some of the capital for her store, Jones said. She'd like to open another store, she said, but not until this one is self-supporting.

Jones' experience includes managing hair salons and operating her own salon, which currently is located in a separate room of her clothing store.

A customer of her salon helps out in the store when Jones leaves for buying trips in New York, Atlanta and Las Vegas, where she chooses clothing items she thinks will appeal to a variety of age groups.

Another prominent feature in the store is a play area for her 4-year-old daughter, Rachel.

She started up on the roof

"I had an easy in" to the owners' circle, said Cynthia Shelor, president and owner of John T. Morgan Roofing and Sheet Metal Co. Inc.

Shelor may have understated her career path, although she is the third generation of the Morgan family to own the business, located off Plantation Road in Roanoke.

Shelor's route to ownership was anything but easy. She started her career in the Kroger Co.'s management program and managed stores on Lee Highway and Ninth Street Southeast in Roanoke.

"I think I was the first female store manager in the mid-Atlantic region" for Kroger, she said.

In 1984 Shelor moved to the family business, where her first tasks included rooftop labor. "I slung a mop" to spread tar, "and I've been on a slope roof" to install other materials, she said.

Her field experience includes estimating the cost of jobs and making sales presentations.

Shelor had to know the business's details. "Otherwise, people would say, 'She doesn't understand it' " when they want to know how a roofing material is likely to perform on their building.

Shelor bought the company in 1994 from her parents, Melvin T. Morgan Sr. and Wanda Morgan. They helped with the financing, Shelor said, and the company now grosses between $3 million and $6 million per year.

Although she tries to watch the details of the business, Shelor said, a good group of employees lets her feel comfortable traveling to industry shows to keep abreast of changes in materials and techniques. She also tours the South to golf tournaments with her son, Matt, a member of the Salem High School golf team.

Overcoming old stereotypes

If Shelor had the luxury of a map for her career path, Woodward had the opposite.

Her EastWest DyeCom does about $750,000 a year of business ranging from color coatings for artists' materials to insulating parts for Army tanks and night vision goggles.

"I've always been self-employed," starting with a newspaper route, Woodward said.

"My mother was determined to put me on the track toward independence."

Starting in business meant Woodward had to find a business to start in.

At first, she ran a watchmaking and repair center. It suited Woodward's mechanical talents and interest in fixing things. But she remembers an older woman who brought a watch to her at Henebry's Jewelers in Roanoke and upon seeing a female watchmaker said, "No way am I going to leave my watch with you."

"I still face that stuff in business," Woodward said, but that customer's stereotyped perception is fading.

Watchmaking led her to contacts with artists who made jewelry from aluminum, Woodward said, and she discovered there was a market in supplying the metal. Then she discovered there was a better market in supplying colored aluminum.

Still, there were episodes where, "I almost fell on my face," she said. Once, during a business lull, she took a $6-an-hour job with a Roanoke company. "I'm worth more than this," she thought, and left that job when a customer needing colored aluminum placed a $3,000 order with her fledgling company.

Another pitfall was barely survived when she bought a ton of aluminum stock to get a discount and discovered that it took a long time to sell that much inventory, Woodward said.

A turning point came last year when a marketing analyst looked at her company's data and identified the "80-20" component.

That was the 20 percent of customers who provided 80 percent of her profit, Woodward said, and EastWest DyeCom streamlined its products. It went from supplying 5,000 parts to providing only 31, and from dyeing in 30 colors to only 12. She raised the minimum order from $50 to $250.

"We're doing more business now than we ever have," she said and is trying to find a way to anodize 20,000 small pieces of metal in a single day for more efficiency.

Customers include companies that manufacture military equipment and medical devices that need the protective coating that comes from the anodizing, which is an electrochemical process.

Anodizing involves passing an electrical current through an acid electrolyte bath into which the metal is dipped to harden its surface. Further baths apply dyes to color the now-oxidized surface.

The anodizing process also can prevent surfaces from conducting electricity, making it possible for a single piece of an Army tank to have a conductive surface in one area, while other surfaces are nonconductive and safe to touch while electrical pulses flow through it.

Growth by word-of-mouth

Building a business is a step-by-step process, other prominent businesswomen say.

Valeta Pittman, who with her husband, Jack, owns Halifax Fine Furnishings on Brambleton Avenue near Cave Spring, said her success came from an appreciation for Oriental rugs, hand-woven from Pakistan, India and Iran.

Although her college degree was in medical technology, Pittman found she needed a new career when she and her husband, a doctor, moved to Roanoke and he went into a pathology practice.

Starting 20 years ago in a small building on U.S. 220 near Clearbrook, she stocked rugs purchased at the spring furniture market in High Point, N.C., and slowly grew a clientele who shared her interest in the rugs.

"The best advertising is word-of-mouth," Pittman said, and she built the client base by participating in organizations whose members were interested in fine furnishings.

Her store carries a line of furniture accents and accessories, but her best products include an inventory of about $500,000 worth of handmade rugs.

That's just the right size for her business, Pittman said; she doesn't want it to get much bigger.

Fascinated by manufacturing

Cynthia Gardner, owner of the Twists & Turns furniture business on Campbell Avenue in Roanoke, combines two operations -- manufacturing and retail.

Its custom-designed metal furniture pieces, usually benches, often bear the logo of commercial customers.

The Virginia Tech Hokie Bird, the Virginia Military Institute emblem, the seal of the U.S. Defense Department, and even animals in the Toledo Zoo appear in cutout patterns on the metal backs of chairs that Twists & Turns made to the customers' specifications.

The retail store on Roanoke's City Market occupies a space once filled by the semi-famous Boiler Room restaurant, now an inviting showroom lit by tall windows and one-of-a-kind chairs, tables and bed furniture.

Gardner meets customers in the store, but her real interest is in the manufacturing operation that's managed mostly by her son, Anthony Gardner.

"Manufacturing is where the powerhouse is," Cynthia Gardner said. "It fascinates me. To see a raw piece of flat steel come out looking like this is amazing."

The product has made her store a destination for out-of-town customers, Gardner said, but sometimes they say something that Gardner calls the wrong thing: "What's a place like this doing in Roanoke? It ought to be in San Francisco."

"It's here because I happen to like this place," Gardner said.