Forty Under 40: Sarah Mitchell

Sarah Nabholz Mitchell’s professional career reads like a 21st-century fairy tale.nShe and a Little Rock coworker, Pam Purvis Hatcher, were burned out on advertising agency work, and Mitchell wanted to have a second child. So in 1996 they decided to try to sell the fancy invitations and announcements they had been making for friends.n”We thought it would just be something that we would do custom, and I would print it off my printer and that would be that just to make enough money to justify being at home,” she said.nEight years later, Inviting Co. and its sister companies, Ink Well Inc. and Treehouse Designs, employ between 60 and 70 people. n”Once we realized there was a market for the product we were doing, we had high hopes. We definitely shot for the moon,” Mitchell said.nSales vaulted from $350,000 in 1997 to more than $5 million last year.nMitchell is still designing paper products from her home, now in Fayetteville, and Hatcher works from her home in Denver.nTheir companies support the Susan G. Komen Foundation in Fayetteville, Centers for Youth and Families and the Single Parent Scholarship Fund in Little Rock, and Denver Children’s Hospital.