A Closer Look: Kraus, Sherbrooke

Photograph by John Redmond

FRESH OUT OF BUSINESS school, '94 classmates Janet Kraus and Kathy Apruzzese Sherbrooke drove across the country together and talked about starting a company.
       Kraus was going on to a job in strategy for the Body Shop, and Sherbrooke was about to become product manager for a software company. But they had become obsessed with the idea of launching a new kind of business: a company that would take care of all those chores that no one seemed to have time for anymore. Their product would be time.
       "I was around people all the time who would say, 'I wish I could just pay someone to wait at home for the cable TV guy,'" says Kraus. "Women would say, though men wouldn't have the guts, 'What I really need is a wife.'"
       Kraus and Sherbrooke envisioned a company that would do all that dry cleaning and gift buying and running around town that had once been the job of the so-called stay-at-home wife. In 1996, with funds raised from friends and family, they founded Circles, a Boston-based company that runs errands for busy professionals. At first targeted to individual consumers, today almost all of Circles' business comes from corporations that offer the firm's services as a benefit to make their employees' lives less hectic. Less frazzled employees are, they reason, happier, more productive employees.
       How does it work? A company pays Circles to offer any or all of their basic services--from car care to shoe repair--to its employees. For less regular errands, companies can ask Circles to make a concierge available. An employee who can't find time to buy a wedding gift can call Circles--or go to its Web site at www.circlesonline.com--and ask the concierge to do it. A Circles concierge will also wait at home for the cable installer, pick up prescriptions, get a bracelet fixed, or buy a bag of fertilizer. Circles makes its money from the companies that hire it, as well as from the network of almost 1,000 service providers who pay Circles to bring business their way.
       The growing success of Circles is simplifying a lot of lives--but not those of its founders. Kraus and Sherbrooke are increasingly busy and overworked. The solution? Kraus has started using the Circles dog walker, while Sherbrooke is now having her laundry picked up.

--BY JENNIFER REESE