Support Structure Helps Entrepreneurs Flourish
Published Feb 13, 2009
An educational workshop sponsored by the Small Business Development Center at Portland Community College spotlights Dolce Divas Bakery.
An entrepreneur here, a three-person shop there - it all adds up. And in the Portland region, it adds up to more than $2 billion a year in payroll and 275,000 jobs, making small business a big economic engine.
While the region certainly doesn’t lack for major corporations, it’s also home to about 50,000 small businesses. This fact isn’t lost on the city or the state, both of which pump significant resources into agencies and programs that help fledgling companies grow and thrive.
“There’s a lot of support in Portland for local businesses,” says Debbie Kitchin, owner of InterWorks LLC and chair of the Portland Business Alliance’s Small Business Council. “People want to do business with someone they know, and there are a lot of groups that work with the businesses to help them promote their products and services.”
Benefits of Collaboration
Kitchin and her husband, Jim, opened InterWorks in 1994, and they have grown the residential-remodeling and commercial-construction firm to 10 employees and an expanded roster of services.
Being part of a larger community of small businesses has helped, as have outside resources from the Alliance and other organizations, she says.
“There’s a lot of collaboration here in terms of helping businesses grow,” Kitchin says. “When these organizations work together, that helps leverage the resources available for all the small businesses.”
Of course, companies have to know how to tap into these resources and navigate the system, says Ryan Buchanan, president and CEO of eROI Inc., a company he describes as a hybrid Web and e-mail marketing/design and development agency and software company.
Now six years old and with 48 employees, eROI has made Inc. magazine’s Top 500 list of the fastest-growing, privately held companies. But its success doesn’t mean a move to a larger base of operations.
“I’m a huge proponent of Portland and a member of several entrepreneurial and marketing organizations here and in the state,” Buchanan says. “Beyond that, Portland is just incredibly collaborative. Competitors really help each other in the areas where we might come together. Portland has been the right kind of culture for what we’re doing, and it continues to be a real open-source community for companies that are starting and growing here.”
Sustainability Attracts Innovators
Many, many other business owners are equally high on Portland, says Jackie Babicky-Peterson, senior business adviser at the Oregon Small Business Development Center Network’s Portland Community College branch.
“We’ve seen 11,000 new small businesses begin here in the last five years,” says Babicky-Peterson, who also owns and operates Babicky Performance Partners, a business consulting firm.
“Its culture has always made Portland a small-business favorite, but the move to sustainability is really attracting the innovators,” she adds. “Portland is really attracting the younger, creative class – people who have ideas and who are finding out that this is a great place to start a company.”
Story by Joe Morris
Photo by Jeff Adkins
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