Greenville, SC -- Twenty years ago Jack Tate graduated from Harvard as a young lawyer. Two years later, while his wife, Ginny, was raising their baby, lawyer Tate changed law books for diapers and opened a large baby store. The very first year, a combination of timing, good research, and hard work helped the Tates reach a volume of $500,000. Within eight years, expansion of the business, now called Baby Superstore, enabled the SBA to come up with an expansion loan of $460,000. Today the firm has over two dozen franchise stores, annual sales of $27,000,000, and employs over 350 people in stores averaging 20,000 sq. ft. each. Success came before the money, but the SBA helped to lubricate the company’s growth at the right time.
| Hot Dog! Maine’s Small Business Person of the Year |
Portland, ME -- H. Allen Ryan worked for a hot dog and luncheon meat producer in the state of Maine. With the SBA’s help he transformed it into a dynamo, offering 4,000 different food and non-food items to 1,400 restaurants, schools, and hospitals. “The local bank insisted on an SBA guarantee as part of their commitment, meaning that without SBA’s help the whole deal was likely to die,” disclosed Ryan. “I found SBA to be detailed, professional, and very helpful during the negotiations for the guarantee. They asked tough questions as they sought to balance the interests of the taxpayer and their responsibility to assist small companies. In the end, they saved our deal. Without SBA’s help, I might not own our growing business today.”
| The Fastest-Growing Hispanic Firm in Arizona |
Phoenix, AZ -- Roberto Ruiz’s Maya Construction is also the tenth fastest-growing Hispanic firm in the nation. With the SBA’s help, sales went from $1,700 a year in 1978 to $23,000,000 in ten years. Ruiz has built everything from schools at Fort Huachuca to a water distribution system (including drinking fountains) for the National Park Service in the Grand Canyon. Maya has built private and state building, roadway, and underground water and sewer projects, as well. Seeing himself “as a coach, not a captain” of his company, Ruiz likes to act “as a cheering section for employees, to tell them when they’re on target and guide them when they’re not.” Twice a year, he and his top managers take a two-day retreat to plot Maya’s business future.
Ruiz has garnered many accolades, including Arizona Small Business Person of the Year and National Minority Contractor of the Year. SBA likes to think of itself as a cheering section for this intrepid Mexican-American.
| Federal Express: SBA Was There at the Creation |
Federal Express vice president Fred Smith, whose family founded Dixie Greyhound, started his air package delivery service in Memphis, Tennessee.
Undercapitalized and overreaching, the company had lost close to $7,000,000 in the first few months. There was no partial bail-out possible -- Smith determined he needed no less than $24,500,000 of investment capital (to be matched by banks) in order to service the dozens of cities that would make the new delivery concept both profitable and efficient. Meanwhile, as one report put it, “the company was being held together with bailing wire.”
SBA’s Small Business Investment Companies (SBICs) supplied 20 percent or roughly $5,000,000 of financing needed by Federal Express when the young firm was in its critical start-up years.
Some 51,000 people are working at Federal Express (up from only 518 at the time of SBA’s involvement). The $3,000,000,000 company created a new concept in hard copy delivery and a whole industry of competitors as well.
| From A $75 Parking Lot Striper Machine to Riches |
Steven Neighbors of Boise, Idaho, swept parking lots as a schoolboy. He noticed that many lots needed fresh stripes to guide drivers into parking spaces. When the opportunity to buy a $75 striping machine came along, he took it.
“I had a dream to start a road-striping business and was not taken seriously by anyone but the SBA. Their personnel listened seriously to a kid who looked fifteen, and set in motion for him to be trained to consider market, project goals, cash flow, etc. In essence, the Small Business Administration, with the commitment of a direct loan of $10,000 and an investment of time, created a small businessman.”
The investment of time was provided chiefly by SBA’s SCORE counselor Jim Cheatham, a retired engineer, and Nancy Guiles, a loan officer, in the Boise district office. The result is business history. Neighbors’ company, Eterna-Line Corp., was listed among Inc. magazine’s 500 fastest-growing private companies for several years. Annual sales went from $5,000 at the time of the SBA loan to $10,000,000 today. Currently there are 200 employees.
| Canvas Tarps Made in a Basement |
He invented a beltless tarp that rolls automatically over a truck full of grain. His hardwood veneers adorn many renovated homes across the land. But what makes Ed Shorma most happy is that there are at least fifteen nationalities among his 220 employees at Wahpeton Canvas in North Dakota.
You wouldn’t expect Malaysians and Indonesians to work in 30°-below-zero weather, or what Northerners call white-out storms. But Shorma has sponsored dozens of refugees from many lands, and has gone one step further -- he's given them jobs.
Up-from-the-bootstraps stories don’t involve SBA -- that’s the conventional misconception. After an unsuccessful stint at farming and a term in the state legislature, Shorma wanted to go full tilt with canvas-making. To affect a move from a basement to a downtown space, SBA loaned Shorma $75,000. The extra space was put to immediate use manufacturing original equipment seats for Canadian farm equipment makers -- helping the trade balance in the days when it wasn’t so unbalanced.
At the time of SBA’s first loan, Wahpeton Canvas had gross annual sales of $147,000 and seventeen employees. Today the firm sells $12,000,000 worth of goods a year, and has 220 employees. Not a bad return on investment!
| The Pretty Puny Pickle Packer |
Like relish on your hot dog? Have a yen for sweet (or dill) pickles? Chances are, sometime in the past thirty years, most Americans have enjoyed a product of Atkins Pickle Company of Atkins, Arkansas. Think of the Ozarks the next time you taste a good, long, green pickle. And think of the SBA -- without it, Atkins would have remained a small, unknown pickle packer.
The pickle company received a $350,000 SBA loan when it had less than $l, 000,000 in annual sales and 100 employees. Today Atkins Pickle has $20,000,000 in yearly sales and 400 employees.
| Fired Man Builds Uniform Chain |
“I was fired into greatness,” quips Harvey Hafetz of his dismissal from a job as a sales representative for a cosmetics distributor. Of course, that’s today -- then it was a painful experience. Harvey’s wife, Zena, had decided just that year to leave her job as an elementary school teacher and try another challenge. The couple purchased a small uniform shop in Reading, Pennsylvania, as an investment and to give Zena part-time on-the-job training for a new career. But when Harvey lost his job, he joined his wife at the little store. Z&H Uniforms was born.
Today, the company has twenty retail stores, mostly in shopping malls, and eleven leased departments catering primarily to health care professionals. A contract sales department furnishes executive-type apparel, hospitality, food service, and industrial-type clothing to industry.
Z&H added ten stores after acquiring a Philadelphia-based competitor’s stores with the help of a $600,000 SBA-guaranteed loan from Meridian Bank. The firm had 75 employees then: only three years later, it has 170. Annual sales volume has doubled in that time, from $3,500,000 to $7,000,000.
| Fishing Boat Success |
Ever heard of a startup fishing boat? It happens. With a loan of $500,000, SBA helped launch the Huntress II and its captain, Richard Goodwin, into the fishing waters