An hour before A Beautiful Calling boutique in Eagle River is set to open for the day, co-founder Jon Touchette shares the background of the jewelry they sell from the Starfish Project which employs women who are survivors of human sex trafficking.
“Their quality, really from a jewelry standpoint, is next to none. It's just amazing quality, amazing pieces, but also the way that that program works is some women stay, some women go to where Starfish Project is helping them gain the education they need to go into accounting or some other field within their country,” said Touchette. “They can leave and kind of be reintroduced into society as someone who has been empowered to take control of their own life and to move forward.”
Every item found at A Beautiful Calling is made by marginalized people around the world, whether that’s survivors of human trafficking, at-risk for it, affected by extreme poverty or some other reason.
The ethical boutique founded by Jon and his wife Jessica is certified by the Fair Trade Federation. They do research into each of the suppliers they sell product from in their shop.
Items they sell range from jewelry and clothing to spices and home décor.
“Our suppliers give the employment, and we use business as a way to change lives and really bring an end to things like poverty and trafficking all around the world,” said Touchette. “This is how we feel we're living out our faith and just serving the communities around the world of the people who need it most, simply because what they need most is an opportunity.”
Jessica used to work for a company selling items made by survivors of human sex trafficking.
In early 2025, Jessica and Jon went into business for themselves, launching A Beautiful Calling online.
“It really just was a year that was unexpected. We almost over doubled what I thought we were going to be doing in the first year,” said Jon. “It became very clear that our 1,100 square foot house wasn't big enough to run the size of business that we were getting.”
In the lead up to finding and opening a brick-and-mortar store, Jon enrolled in Nicolet College’s Start Your Own Business Class earlier this year.
At that time, he was still weighing options on which route he wanted to take. Jon says the course was “incredibly helpful” even as someone who grew up around his father’s business and has been doing it himself for years.
“This is something that I always felt like I'm a fairly good expert at. The instructor did a really good job of making me realize I'm not as big of an expert as I think I am, and that was so great and humbling and helpful,” said Jon. “Then there was just a lot of different things that I thought I knew, that but I didn't have hard evidence that this class allowed me to, ‘Hey, this is where you go find it. This is how you do the search. This is how you utilize tools.’ There's a lot of different tools that I was never using before that I've had the opportunity to pour into, and really learn how to effectively use to grow my business.”
Jon is one of seven entrepreneurs from Vilas County have taken the Start Your Own Business course at Nicolet.
Supporting Small Businesses
Vilas County Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Kathy Schmitz says support for entrepreneurs and small businesses is critical in a place like Vilas County where roughly 80% of all the businesses employ fewer than 10 people.
“We can help promote that class, and then the business owners or the entrepreneurs that are in Vilas County can take that class,” said Schmitz. “Then when they start that startup in Vilas County, then we can transition to us, and we can provide that ongoing support from there as well. It's really just a perfect synergy of Vilas County working very closely in the VCEDC with Nicolet College on that.”
The Start Your Own Business class is a recent edition to Nicolet College that started last year. The eight-week long course is designed to take ideas and turn them into a business plan.
Nicolet College will launch its third cohort of the class next week.
It’s part of a larger School of Business and Entrepreneurship led by Dean Ellen Mathine.
“She's quite a powerhouse in entrepreneurship and business here in the Northwoods. A lot of people know her work, former business owner herself. She brings those sensibilities to leading our entrepreneurship programming,” said Nicolet College President and VCEDC Board Chair Kate Ferrel. “That's been such a natural [fit] to expand that and to build a really successful entrepreneurship curriculum that's driven by people who have owned businesses, been successful in businesses, been in the trenches with the banks and the lawyers and the market research and the working seven days a week, 16 hours a day.”
Ferrel says entrepreneurship is a driver throughout the Northwoods and partnerships help give it momentum.
“It's not just VCEDC. It's not just Nicolet College. It's our entities along with all of the townships that are eager to move their townships forward and thrive. It's the nonprofits that we partner with. It's the state agencies that can connect us to resources. It's also local and county government that helps to support us,” said Ferrel. “There's no way we could do it alone. It cannot be understated how important all of those cogs in this economic development wheel are.”
Schmitz says business has been booming in Vilas County, which she credits to all the different partnerships that have come together to support entrepreneurs and small businesses. She stresses that doesn’t end once they a business opens their doors.
“According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly a quarter of all businesses in the U.S. fail in the first year, and it's roughly half, 48%, in the first five years,” said Schmitz. “We want to prevent those businesses from becoming that statistic.”
Ready to grow
When they knew they wanted to open their store in Eagle River, the Touchette’s connected with Schmitz.
“It was so helpful and important to figure out what the traffic looked like and what that looks like and what's available and how am I going to be successful, and more importantly, she connected me to all the people I needed to be connected to in order to find the right place,” said Jon.
The physical store has been open since Father’s Day this June.
Jon says the busy summer months have brought in visitors and residents while also seeing their number of online customers more than double.
“It's been really great to get that support and meet the other businesses,” said Jon. “We're really excited for the launching that this allows our business to take from.”
To those looking to start or grow their business, Jon recommends both connecting to their local economic development corporation and the Nicolet course.
“It is incredibly helpful to help everybody understand. We're all in different stages. I was somebody who went to the class and had a business. There were some people who were going to the class and said, ‘I would like to have a business,’ and some that were somewhere in between those two spaces,” said Jon. “We each got something different out of it. That was what we needed, and the skill sets that we all walked away with just helped us better prepared to be a business owner.”
