More women manning warehouses

A few months ago, an alarm accidentally went off at 1 a.m. at the 3G Warehouse Inc. in Farmingdale. Lauren Nichols rushed there and was met by a police officer. He asked if she could call the manager.

She was the manager, Nichols said. Well, could she get the owner? She was that, too.

Women are entering the warehousing business, once almost entirely dominated by men, in larger numbers, according to industry officials and women's advocacy groups.

Nichols, 32, once an elementary schoolteacher in the Brentwood district, decided she wanted a business of her own. To get some everyday experience, she left the school district in 2005 and went to work for the warehouse and transportation company in Bethpage owned by her father, Larry Frisina.

In 2009, she opened 3G, which started as a 25,000-square-foot space and is now 75,000 square feet, filled with everything from pool heaters to boxes of perfume and pharmaceuticals. Aside from storing, 3G packages and ships hundreds of orders to businesses and consumers each day. The company has additional warehouses in Bethpage, Edison, N.J., and California. Its annual sales are about $2.5 million, up from $1.2 million in 2010.

"Sometimes people are a little surprised" to see a woman at the helm, Nichols said. "Sometimes they feel I couldn't be the owner."

Marsha Firestone, president of the Manhattan-based Women Presidents' Organization, an advisory group for women entrepreneurs grossing $2 million in revenue, said about 40 percent of the 25 million private businesses in the country are woman-owned. That compares to only 4.5 percent of the total businesses in 1977.

Firestone said, however, it may still be unusual for a woman to run a warehouse. Nichols said she knows of no other Long Island warehouses run by women. "Our major competitors are men," she said.