Line Daems, left, discusses interior design with Linda G. DiFazio, right, coowner of Seraphim.

SEEKONK — People new to business can sometimes be naïve about how to make their sales grow.

Most sales come from repeat customers, but finding and keeping customers takes more than unlocking the door and flipping over the “Open” sign, according to small-business consultants.

Growing a new business takes a lot of time and personal attention to customers, some of whom will become its biggest boosters.

New businesses often grow by word-of-mouth referrals, conversations among acquaintances that come with an implied or overt recommendation about a service, person or product.

“It’s significant,” is how Bob Shephard, a business-development counselor characterized the effectiveness of word-of-mouth referrals.

A year ago, Line Daems, of Providence, and Pernilla Frazier, of Cranston, started a business that’s grown mostly through such referrals.

They are partners in Kreatelier, a consumer-goods and home-decorating firm the two women have run until recently from a mill studio in Pawtucket.

They met at the French-American School of Rhode Island, a school on the East Side of Providence that their children attend. Their business grew out of a joint effort they made about two years ago to help out at a school fundraiser. They sewed together some brightly colored fabric organizers for makeup, cutlery and writing or drawing implements to sell at a holiday craft fair run by the school.

The pieces sold well at the fair. Requests for more organizers followed in the weeks after

Last October, they incorporated their business, Kreatelier LLC. The name comes from a mash-up of the Flemish pronunciation of “creative,” with a hard “C” sound and “atelier” — a workshop.

They each invested $6,000 in cash and material to start the business and have since put in more money to help keep it growing.

While they paid a brand-development firm to help create a Web site for their business, most of their investment has been in time, not money.

“Our best marketing strategy is we really love what we do,” Frazier said shortly after they started the business.

Most clients find them through personal referrals.

In June, Frazier worked on a decorating project for Ann Redpath, who owns a house off Blackstone Boulevard, also on the East Side.

Redpath’s house is a classic area residence — a center-hall, colonial-style, home with Italianate influences. Built in the 1930s, the exterior of the house is white stucco topped by a tile roof. The interior is traditional New England, with plenty of classical touches — crown molding and wood kick plates.

There’s a fireplace in the formal dining room on the west side of the first floor. There’s an upright piano and a small dining table in the room, for which Frazier has sewn valances she brought over late one day that month.

Redpath bought the house on Mount Avenue about five years ago, when she moved from Georgia to Rhode Island to take a job as assistant treasurer for Hasbro Inc. in Pawtucket.

Frazier landed the project the way many small-business owners find their clients — she had done work for one of Redpath’s friends.

They first met in April to talk about designs for curtains and valances that would fit the home.

“We did a couple of rounds of looking at fabric,” Frazier said.

They each made trips to Framingham, Mass., where Frazier often buys cloth and other materials for her home-décor projects.

“We picked the style and then we picked the fabric,” Redpath said. “Once I looked at it, I said, ‘That’s it.’ ”

It took about three weeks “off and on” to make valances for the living room’s windows, Frazier said.

“Sometimes I send stuff to the seamstress, but these were fun,” she said, referring to a subcontractor who does some sewing for Kreatelier.

Referrals may be a cheap way to find customers, said Shephard, the business counselor, but business owners also have to find paying customers in less-haphazard ways.

A semi-retired engineer, Shephard since 1994 has advised businesspeople in and around Orlando, Fla., as a SCORE volunteer.

Headquartered in Herndon, Va., the nonprofit SCORE association teaches people how to form and grow businesses. Shephard is one of 10,500 working and retired executives and business owners who donate time as counselors to novice business owners.

Founded in 1964, the association has 389 chapters throughout the United States and its territories. Shephard works with fledgling business owners as part of the SCORE affiliation with the Disney Entrepreneur Center in Orlando.

“The major point for companies today is finding out who their customer is going to be,” he said. “They need to do research, that’s where very many business fail, because they don’t take the time to do the research.”

That means figuring out which people are most likely to buy or use the goods or services the business will provide and operating the business in a place or way it can reach those potential customers.

The Kreatelier partners have done that homework, which they completed during a 13-week business-planning workshop offered by the Center for Women & Enterprise, a nonprofit organization that helps people start and grow businesses.

The workshop offered a step-by-step approach to setting up a business, from focusing product and service offerings to identifying customers and advertising, as well as directing participants on how to handle business incorporations and licenses.

The plan for Kreatelier runs to more than 20 pages and describes their target customers — educated professional mothers who like European designs. It describes market trends that could work in their favor, such as renewed interest in handcrafted products and resource reuse. The plan lays out a three-pronged revenue strategy of retail sales, home-décor projects and conducting workshops.

Such planning is the start of the sales effort.

“Once they get that [research] then they can begin to advertise and market accordingly,” Shepard said.

Spending money on advertising or marketing campaigns is critical.

“That’s a big [tactic] … the cash flow has got to contain marketing,” he said.

When business is slow, entrepreneurs are wont to make a classic mistake.

“The first thing they do is reduce marketing — that’s a killer,” Shephard said.

Aside from their investment in a Web site, Daems and Frazier have spent little on advertising — limiting it to an ad in a fundraising event booklet for their children’s school.

They’ve chosen instead to spend money renting sales booths at fundraising events, opened their former Pawtucket studio to tours during arts and social events held in the Mineral Spring Avenue building and generated an e-mail newsletter they send to clients and acquaintances.

Last month, they took a more concrete path to raise their visibility, renting a storefront on Hope Street in Providence.

The real-estate downturn helped the partners secure a favorable lease on the store, but it’s too early to tell whether sales have increased because of the move.

Without a big advertising budget, Daems and Frazier have relied on personal contacts and high-touch service to find and keep their customers.

“The attitude of the salesperson is vital,” said Shephard.

Simply greeting a potential customer warmly can help make a sale or secure a service contract, he said. “It’s the personal interest. It’s the idea of growing your business [by showing] you’re interested in them.”

An example is the effort the Kreatelier team put into creating linen goods for a new business in Seekonk, Mass.

“We have been very busy with this teahouse,” Frazier said in mid-August, as she worked with a student in a sewing class. “It’s been more work than we thought.”

North Providence resident Linda G. DiFazio and her business partner, Attleboro resident Cheryl A. Laverty, plan to open their teahouse, which they call Seraphim, by mid-October.

The partners have rented a place on Central Avenue in Seekonk, near the Pawtucket city line, for their business. The building started life in 1935 as a bowling alley and most recently was home to a dance studio. DiFazio and Laverty decided they could transform the narrow, brick-front, building into a place for sedate tea services.

Along the way, a friend who knew of their plans gave them a January newspaper article about Daems and Frazier. The story mentioned the environmental bent of Kreatelier.

“We love reusing old things,” Frazier said in an early interview. “We make a lot of products out of old things.”

They aimed to create a high-style ambience in their teahouse, said the restaurant owners, but wanted to be as environmentally friendly as they could.

“What first drew us to them was their use of recycled fabric,” DiFazio said. “We wanted to go as green as possible.”

But it was months before they were ready to meet with a decorator, DiFazio said.

“We carried that article around until we could meet with them in August,” she said.

That meeting led to a contract to create the curtains, tea cozies and other linens they’ll use in the new eatery.

“They were very excited about meeting with us,” Laverty said. Sometimes business goes like that, Daems said.

Kreatelier’s partners gave them plenty of say in how things would look, said the teahouse owners.

They’ve also finished their work on time; something Shephard said has to be a priority.

“Promptness is vital,” Shephard said. “They’re going to see you as dependable.”

A sale doesn’t end when the goods are delivered, Shepherd cautioned.

“The most important thing [they] can do is follow up the product after it is delivered,” he said. “The sales follow-up is very important indeed.”

They have to find out whether customers got what they wanted and that the goods are holding up under use.

“Go back and find out if [customers] were comfortable and if not, find out what could they do better and then do better,” Shephard said.

If something is wrong, fix it fast, Shephard, said. Offer a small rebate or discount, if possible.

“The businessperson has to go and rectify the situation,” he said. “The customer is right; sometimes that has to be practiced.”

If handled correctly, the issue can help cement a long-term business relationship.

“Even if you screw up once in a while, they’ll come back to you,” he said.

He also recommends visiting a client occasionally as a way to remind them they’re important to a business.

“Once you know you have a satisfied customer you can reduce your visits — but visit them,” he said.

Ultimately though, money matters.

One of the most important details to be worked out with the Seraphim owners was the bottom line, noted the teahouse owners.

“I gave them a budget and so far their under budget — that’s the best way to do it,” DiFazio said.

To contact Daems and Frazier; call 432-7995, visit their store at 804 Hope St., Providence, or visit their Web site, www.kreatelier.com

pgrimald@projo.com