The PR Moms.

Women create national agency in cyberspace to make money, form bonds with colleagues, all the while saving enough time to spend with their kids

EVERY Wednesday morning, eight women who live in various spots across the 3,000-mile expanse of the United States log on to their computers and hold a business meeting in an online chat room, where they plan the day-to-day actions of their public relations company.

While their cyber meeting most often deals with press releases, special event planning and placing stories in the media, they are also likely to share child-rearing tips and sympathize when one of them has an ache or a pain.

The women are known as the PR moms. They are stay-at-home professional mothers who have banded together to form KidStuff Public Relations, a virtual PR agency based in cyberspace. The company's No. 1 client is Zany Brainy, a Pennsylvania-based educational toy store.

KidStuff partner Meredith Emmanuel, who lives in the San Fernando Valley, never had a single. face-to-face encounter with any of her co-workers until eight months after joining the team, when they flew to Chicago to meet at an airport hotel.

"It is definitely a less stressful way to work," Emmanuel said. "You don't have people in your face and there is less office politics."

Emmanuel and the KidStuff staff are doing what many workaday men and women long for. They are taking advantage of the technology revolution to work out of a spare bedroom in their houses and be stay-at-home parents at the same time. They are members of the burgeoning virtual office space, its growth being aided by faster computers, more software programs and a ready acceptance of the Internet.

"Key for all of us is that we are all moms, and life is messy is when you have kids. You can't always predict when something is coming up," said Beth Blenz-Clucas, who works for KidStuff out of Portland, Ore. "I can volunteer at my son's school and write that press release later that night when my sons are in bed."

Virtual roots

KidStuff got its start five years ago when Lisa Orman, who lives in Waunakee, Wis., did the public relations for Zany Brainy's new store in Chicago. Zany Brainy grew from a handful of toy stores in the Midwest into a nationwide company, and needed a good publicist to help out.

In 1998, Orman got the national account and had to hire a national staff. Her primary criterion was that the people she worked with had to share her passion as a mother promoting children's products.

"I had to add people fast," Orman said from her home office in Wisconsin. "I believe in the products I represent and have a passion when I speak about it because I am a mom with young kids. And I wanted people like that."

So Orman recruited other PR people who had worked at least one year by themselves, and had at least one year of experience in the PR field.

Orman works out of a 100-square-foot former bedroom in the home she shares with her husband and two young children. Her female colleagues work out of their homes scattered across the country in Portland, Ore., Alexandria, Va., St. Louis, Mo., and Malvern, Pa.

As the virtual PR firm has expanded, it has continued to service its principal client, Zany Brainy, and added three other major clients.

Emmanuel joined the team more than two years ago, and it has proved to be just the working environment she needed.

The twice-divorced single mother started her own company, Emmanuel Bates Communication, in 1997, but she netted only $10,000 in that first year. In August 1998, she joined. KidStuff and knew she wanted to concentrate on public relations. She is now billing $7,000 a month in PR fees. About 65 percent of those fees come from KidStuff accounts. The rest are her own accounts.

Parental flexibility

"It seems like a wonderful feminist work model," said Emmanuel, sitting inside her front-room office overlooking the yard of her North Hills home.

It also seems to be the perfect single-mother work model. Emmanuel can take her 8-year-old daughter Savannah to school and be there when she returns.

She no longer spends two to three hours on the freeway to commute to jobs she once held in places like Santa Monica or Beverly Hills.

Her work schedule is much more flexible, too. If she needs to go to a school play in the afternoon, it is possible. In return, there are evenings she works until 8 or 9 p.m. And the business phone is only steps beyond the kitchen.

Initially, weekly meetings among the KidStuff staff were conducted by conference call. But when the first phone bill for a 30-minute call totaled $125, Emmanuel, the computer nerd in the group, downloaded a chat room software program from the Internet and got everyone set up.

So now, every week, the eight associates log on and meet in an Internet chat room to discuss business accounts, upcoming events, press releases, company goals, and ... their children.

One minute the topic will be about a violent toy turn-in program and the next it will be about what to do with an ill child or someone's latest dental surgery.

There is a lot of abbreviated shorthand, such as BRB (Be Right Back), and LOL (Laugh Out Loud).

And using a chat room creates an automatic transcript of each meeting. Every week one of the associates is assigned to go through the chat room notes and highlight the major action points from the meeting and what assignments each person has to complete.

The chat room is also a great team-building vehicle.

"Having this chat room is like having a real support group," Emmanuel said, surrounded by rows of books and filing cabinets and three large monthly calendars that highlight all the special events she is coordinating.

"We share tips and share logistical questions, like: 'How do you do an early morning live TV remote report?"'

KidStuff expects to grow even more in cyberspace. Orman's goal is to increase her annual revenues to $1 million next year (they're currently about $750,000) and add three to five new associates to KidStuff's s virtual network.