USC student’s start-up ‘fig-ness’ helps pay college expenses

Taylor Loveday’s future is growing on trees.

Well, his figs are growing on trees.

And figs – yes, of all things, figs – are helping the 21-year-old lay a path for his future that includes an education, financial independence, business savvy and social competence.

Over the past three years, Loveday has grown his own business from a pair of fig trees in his grandparents’ yard. A junior in the University of South Carolina’s online Palmetto College, Loveday is hands-on with every aspect of the business that’s helping pay his college expenses – from picking, cleaning and sorting the fruits to cooking them into baked goods, packaging and selling them.

“We realized that there was a demand for these. We have a supply,” Loveday said. “When you have things that other people don’t have, that’s when you’ve cornered the market.”

Loveday is a natural salesman, his mother, Sharon Logan, says. Her son lives with a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder characterized by difficulties in social interaction. While maintaining long-term relationships can be a struggle, the short-term interaction of sales is completely comfortable for him.

“(Asperger’s has) had a very serious effect on my relationships,” Loveday said. “It’s been getting better because I’m learning more about social cues and stuff like that.

“When it comes to a customer and a business relationship, it actually is not that awkward for me.”

That’s one major outcome his grandmother, Carolyn Wignes, has hoped for all along by encouraging him in business.

“Getting him in front of the customers has been a really good experience for him,” Wignes said. “I began working with Taylor on this business so that he would have some skills he would need to survive on his own.

“The philosophy of ‘Give a man a fish, and he is dependent on someone forever. Teach him how to fish, and he is dependent on no one’ seemed to be the right thing to do.”

Now Loveday is learning to depend on himself – to get up early and be proactive, to meet work deadlines and respond to customers’ needs, to make prudent business decisions and to be a reliable supplier.

He sells his figs and a variety of baked goods – including bestselling fig bars, fig bread and a new fig pizza – from a stand outside Wignes’ home, at local markets and at Wingard’s Market in Lexington.

Hardly able to keep up with demand for his products, Loveday has earned himself several hundred dollars in just the past couple months since the fig harvesting season began.

Those profits, along with the help of some scholarships and grants, are healthy enough to help cover some of Loveday’s education expenses as he pursues an online degree in human services.

That Loveday would take full advantage of educational opportunities has never been a question for his mother, though as a single mother she has struggled with finances for the two of them.

“You can do whatever you want, but you’re going to go to school,” was the philosophy Logan engrained in her son from a young age. “It’s his hard work that has earned the grades, that has earned the grants. It’s his hard work that has maintained this business to help make the ends meet.”

Loveday said he hopes to one day combine his eduction with his passion for social justice, perhaps pursuing a law career. But first things first: getting his degree, and hopefully doing it without debt.

“(Education is) important because it just makes you a more complete part of society, I believe,” Loveday said. “Especially if you have scholarships, if you have opportunity, I think you owe it to your community and to your children and the rest of the world to educate yourself.”

USC’s Palmetto College offers seven bachelor’s programs with 100 percent of a student’s major requirements online.

With his online classes having begun for the semester, Loveday’s next immediate steps with his business will be to finish out the fig season, which is quickly waning, and look toward new opportunities for selling fall goods. He and his grandmother are already experimenting with pumpkin recipes, and he’ll continue to sell his products at Wingard’s.

He faces an upcoming business challenge as his grandparents expect to sell their property and move to the mountains at some point in the next couple of years. Loveday is hoping to find some folks in the community who have fig trees of their own they’d be willing to let him pick from.

“I just feel like there’s a community out there that will help,” Wignes said. “He’s got a good thing going, but now he’s got a challenge. Just like in any business.”

This story was originally published August 31, 2015 at 7:40 AM with the headline "USC student’s start-up ‘fig-ness’ helps pay college expenses."