SOS Group owner brings 25 years of business experience
The word “quit” is nowhere to be found in Katherine Falcone’s dictionary. She’s had plenty of opportunities to do so, but always takes challenges head on.
Falcone, a Williamstown resident for the past 13 years, is not only a councilwoman but the owner of SOS Group in Williamstown and the chairman of the board of the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce.
In the mid-90s Falcone went through a divorce and was left with her three children. She accepted the challenge and made the best of it.
She worked at Campbell’s Soup in Camden and eventually became involved with a landscaping company that also did snow removal. After running a successful landscaping company for years, she moved on to found the SOS Group in 2013. The SOS Group (Safety Outfitting Services), sells handicap accessories for people with illnesses or who struggle to get around. They sell ramps, stairlifts, bathroom accessories and more.
Falcone knows people can purchase some of the products she sells on Amazon, what makes her company different is the construction aspect.
“It’s more construction-based than anything,” she said. “If you buy a wheelchair, which I can’t compete with Amazon at this point, and you can’t get through the door, I’m going to widen the door for you.”
When Falcone sees something that can be improved upon, she “puts on her cape” and comes to the rescue. Her “fixer” nature is what led her to start a career in politics in 2015.
“I started going to the Main Street Committee meetings,” she described. “I was very quiet, I listened to everything they were talking about, and I didn’t agree with anything they were saying. I kept going to the meetings because I felt I could bring a lot to the table and give them my views that I thought were better, more efficient, and would save the taxpayers money. I would joke with my family and say I was ‘putting on my cape,’”
With a role in place on the Main Street Committee, Falcone took another step forward by starting the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce.
“When businesses locate and come to town they look for towns that have organizations and support. They look for towns that have chambers of commerce,” she said. “It makes a town more valuable.”
All of this culminated in Falcone running for council in 2018 in an effort to have an impact on the town’s economic development. In November, she became the first councilwoman in Monroe Township since Kathy Simon in 2003, breaking a 15-year gap of an all-male council. She received the most votes of anyone running for council with 7,291 votes.
2018 was a huge year for women in politics, a record-breaking number of women were elected to Congress. According to the Washington Post, the previous record was 85 women. The New York Times reported 117 women were elected to office.
While the numbers are trending toward gender equity on the national front, Falcone appreciates the simpler things in the local scene, like garnering a comparison to Monroe Township’s first female mayor.
“There hasn’t been a woman mayor since Mary Duffy,” Falcone said. Duffy was first elected mayor in 1999. Duffy’s son, Tom, currently serves on the economic development committee. Falcone spoke of a conversation with Tom saying she is challenged when people tell her “you’re never going to fix that,” or “you’re never going to change that,”
“I said to him, ‘just watch me, I’m going to do it,’” Falcone said. “He said ‘you remind me of my mother, she used to say the same thing.’”
