Business name:	A Gathering Place, LLC
Founding Partner:	Mary Beth Yurko
E-Mail:	eyurko@agatheringplace.biz
WWW:	http://www.agatheringplace.biz

Hello, all!

I am a 26 year-old former TV producer turned entrepreneur from Austin, TX who is currently in the process of starting a business with my mom, Ellen and her friend, Kathy. We are wholesalers of a product called "A Gathering Place," a filing system which helps people organize the vast amounts of paperwork associated with settling a loved one's estate. It features a durable 21-pocket accordian-style folder, customized tabs, and a "How to" handbook with helpful pointers about the process from my mom and her friend, both widows who have "been there." It creates a safe, non-threatening place for an executor of an estate to place all the necessary documents (ie, everything from the will to death certificates to credit card statements to attorney paperwork, etc.) possibly required during the process and to put them away when it just hurts too much.

The beauty of our product is that was created out of need. Kathy lost her husband eight years ago to a sudden heart attack and was completely overwhelmed by the emotional turbulence of the loss, as well as the painstaking process of settling the estate. She came up with the concept for this product, and designed it to be strictly reactive, dealing with the period after the death. When my father passed away two years ago from stomach cancer, Kathy gave an A Gathering Place folder to my mom and it became what she calls "a lifesaver."

Because of the nature of my father's illness, we had done a lot of preplanning, and the folder was beneficial to us both before and after his passing. Since then both women have given prototypes to friends and family who have also highly benefitted from its existence. The product has evolved into a comprehensive system that takes people from the preplanning process (if need be) all the way through settling the estate (up to two years later).

Our goal is to market this product to people who work directly with families who are settling an estate: funeral directors, estate planners, probate lawyers, insurance companies, churches, Hospice care facilitators, etc. Our target market for our initial phase is through direct sales in both Austin, as well as in the Chicago area, where Kathy lives. We'd love it if you could pass along any referrals to people you know who might work in these industries (no matter where, we hope to eventually go global)! We really believe in our idea and want to make this process less painful for others. Please stop by our website!

Deb Nyberg, Webmistress
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