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Karen Scott wasn't looking to set up a business when she began trolling the Internet to furnish her newly built Mexican villa - she was looking for furniture. Instead she tapped into a technological gold mine.

In the two years since she first Googled the words "Mexican furniture" from her home in Markham, Ont., Ms. Scott has built a growing business for her specialized villa-furnishing service in Mexico - without leaving Canada, without advertising, without an office and without long-distance phone bills.

With only her website (http://www.gringofurniture.com), her BlackBerry and her "indispensable" VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) system, Ms. Scott stocks her online store with an array of made-in-Mexico furniture, housewares and amenities for offshore owners of Mexican villas.

PORTABLE TECHNOLOGIES

She takes customized orders online from customers around the world and then talks to them, her furniture factory partners in Mexico City, and her setup crew in the Cancun area to ensure a seamless operation.

Last year, Gringo Furniture did about $200,000 in business, and it has about 60 customers so far this year, with a goal of $1-million in sales for 2008.

Using portable technologies, she stays in communication with her business whether she is in Markham, her cottage in Haliburton, Ont., or on the road en route to her own Mexican villa.

Ms. Scott's business model grew out of her own frustrations with trying to furnish a part-time home in another country and maintain it for rental use when her family was not in residence. She and her husband bought a villa in the Cancun area in 2002 as an investment, intending to rent it out. But, says Ms. Scott, furnishing it "was a nightmare. We weren't happy with anything we got. There were so many issues with quality and service."

Her introduction to the Internet came with listing the villa as a rental online. "I'm 39," she laughs, "so I wasn't an Internet baby. There was definitely a learning curve."

In 2005, the couple added a second villa in the Playa del Carmen area of the Yucatan peninsula, and Ms. Scott initially intended to go to Mexico with her father to tackle the frustrating furnishing process. But after his sudden death, the trip was cancelled.

HEARD THE HORROR STORIES

Lacking any better ideas, Ms. Scott began searching the Web for a Mexican dealer who could supply furniture for the vacation home. She stumbled on a small, family-owned company in Mexico City that made high-quality traditional country furniture. They were exporting most of what they made to Spain, so they were unfazed by the prospect of arranging a shipment to Cancun. (Even better, Ms. Scott notes, "they spoke English!") Via e-mails, she and the company agreed on a delivery date and Ms. Scott - with some trepidation - placed her order. The company wanted her to wire the cash up front, but eventually "we settled on Amex" for payment.

"We'd heard so many horror stories; there were so many cultural differences doing business in Mexico," she recalls. "So I wasn't sure I really expected the furniture to arrive. I went down, and sat on the steps of my unfurnished house on the appointed day and waited, wondering 'What have I done?' And suddenly, there was this wonderful truck coming down the road. Everything was there; it was perfect. And all of my neighbours were asking me, where did I get this wonderful furniture?"

Photos of the furnished rooms on the villa's rental website prompted e-mails from other villa owners asking where she had found the furniture. And a business was born.

A 'VIRTUAL STORE'

"Everything we do in Mexico is handled over the Internet or by phone," Ms. Scott says. "Mexico's Internet community is much more highly developed than it is here," she adds, noting the tendency for new technologies to leapfrog older, more hidebound systems in many countries.

Ms. Scott's Gringo Furniture is a virtual store: "I have no inventory; nothing gets purchased or made until it is ordered by a client."

The website offers furniture in whole-room packages designed to appeal to rental-property owners looking for durability and low maintenance as well as appealing designs. She recently added plasma screen TVs, dishware and linens to the site's offerings "because there was a demand for them."

She says a typical client spends between $10,000 and $13,000 to equip a vacation home, though larger properties can ring up more than $20,000 to furnish multiple bedrooms or fancy dining and living areas. The company delivers anywhere in Mexico.

SIGNED RECEIPTS VIA THE NET

Ms. Scott says an indispensable piece of e-business technology is eFAX, which allows the sending of signed receipts via the Net. Another key tool is the availability of remote credit-card processing via the Net.

Her "best friend" among communications technologies is VoIP, which allows users to place phone calls over the Net. "It's great," she says. "I have just one phone number to find me anywhere in the world, and I only pay Vonage [her supplier] $39 a month no matter how many calls I make."

VoIP has given Ms. Scott almost complete flexibility to do business no matter where she is, she says. "I can hang out on my deck or have dinner and still be open for business."

When she is en route by car to Mexico, Ms. Scott forwards her Blackberry messages via Bluetooth technology to her computer.

Her one wish for future technology would be seamless wireless access from anywhere, noting that gaps in coverage become more glaring when you want to be continually in touch with your business. "But," she notes, "this is all so far beyond what I ever thought would be possible...."

Still, there have been occasional stumbling blocks. "People still like to touch and feel furniture before they order it," Ms. Scott notes. She tackles this by offering frequent open houses at her villas so that potential customers can see the goods first-hand if they are in the Yucatan peninsula region.

And there have been growing pains. She says quality control by her manufacturing partners has improved greatly, "once they understood that poor quality would cost them money," and notes that personal relationships still benefit from cocktails or dinner when she is in Mexico.

And inevitably, when your store is open round the clock, seven days a week, there comes a point when a frustrated spouse will murmur "Can't you just turn it all off?"

Ms. Scott sighs. "And I have to say: 'But hon, it might be a $16,000 order on the line...' "

*****

Reasons for starting your own business

61%

Portion of Canadian entrepreneurs who said they wanted to be their own boss

39%

Number who cited flexible work hours

12%

Portion who wanted to become wealthy

Source: RBC Royal Bank, 2007 Small Business Survey