Author Archives: Admin

Distributors Expand Market for New Mexico Companies

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Owners of The Bitter End found that distributors could increase revenue. Article by Sandy Nelson.

Bill York started making his own bitters nine years ago while bartending at a Santa Fe cigar bar, where he learned the alchemy of sophisticated cocktails. His small company, The Bitter End, now manufactures its distinctive handcrafted bitters at a Santa Fe facility and reaches consumers through distributors in New York, California, Chicago and Europe.

“This wasn’t the beginning of the craft cocktail movement,” York said, “but there weren’t that many bitters makers on the market, and when I got the idea for spicy, concentrated bitters, it seemed like a good idea to give it a go.”

York developed his initial five recipes while learning how to navigate the bureaucracy of marketing a food product. New Mexico requires alcoholic beverages to be marketed through a distributor, but mixers — classified as alcohol flavorings — are treated as food products.

“I set up a website to accept sales and started sending out samples to prominent bartenders and influencers,” he said. “We visited a lot of bars and gave out a lot of samples; we tweeted like crazy. We went to Tales of the Cocktail [the world’s largest cocktail trade show, which happens every July in New Orleans] and set up a booth to meet people and sell bottles.” Continue reading →

Market Data Available to Small Businesses

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Article by Sandy Nelson.

A business plan is incomplete without a financial section that forecasts how the owner expects the company to grow and how much revenue he believes the company will generate based on his reading of the market for its products or services.

But unless that projection is grounded in reality, it won’t make the desired impression on a lender or investor — or even on a landlord who wants some assurance the business will last as long as the commercial lease.

Lenders, venture capitalists and other investors who finance startups deal in concrete numbers, because they’re betting real money on a concept or enterprise that’s typically untested. If they’re presented with an educated guess about the market that exists for a given product or service, they expect it to be a well-educated one. Continue reading →

Cash Flow: WESST Workshop Teaches Business Essentials

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Julianna Silva is Managing Director of the WESST Enterprise Center. Article by Sandy Nelson.

Keeping track of the money flowing in and out of a business is challenging even in the best of times — when cash is flooding in and the outflow is a comparative trickle. But any business that wants to stay in business needs to master cash flow management.

To help small-business owners get a handle on this essential skill, WESST in Albuquerque is conducting a workshop, “Learn the Language of Your Business Finances,” that includes demonstrations of how businesses can manage their finances, including cash flow, by having participants work with a spreadsheet for a fictitious venture.

The exercise gives tangible examples of the costs that businesses can expect to pay —advertising, supplies, raw materials, loan payments, payroll, rent, insurance premiums, and so on — and the revenue they can anticipate for a given period. The hypothetical example shows trouble looming as bills come due and the revenue falls short of what’s needed to meet obligations. Continue reading →

Small Size No Deterrent for Nonprofit Lender DreamSpring

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Charles Riley obtained a DreamSpring loan for his “solarlite” business. Article by Roger Makin.

Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes, but they all share a love of what they do and the desire to further their endeavors.

For Charles Riley of Carrizozo, entrepreneurship began at an early age. He built his first house at age 21 on land donated by his parents. It was at that time he also started building and selling furniture as a hobby.

While serving as a firefighter in Stratford, Connecticut, Riley simultaneously worked a full-time construction job. As he put it, “I loved the job as a firefighter, but it also had very flexible hours.”

At one point he owned an art gallery in Sun Valley, Idaho. But Riley’s path eventually led him to Carrizozo, New Mexico, where he offered to build a house for his daughter. The construction project became his when his daughter decided to move back to Vermont. Riley finished the house, moved in and stayed. Continue reading →

Following the Signs to Small Business Success

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Virtually everyone in New Mexico has seen signs made by P&M Signs. Article by Jason Gibbs.

You’ve seen the signs.

For nearly half a century, Phil Archuletta, the CEO of P&M Signs, has crafted signs for the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. He got his start in 1970 in Ojo Caliente before opening P&M Signs in Mountainair in 1991. He now employs a dozen people in the rural community in Central New Mexico.

If you’ve toured a national forest, Archuletta’s signs likely guided your way. If you’ve seen the ubiquitous Smokey Bear fire danger signs in New Mexico, that’s his handiwork. Stopped to read a historical marker in the state? Yup, that’s his too.

The signs are produced in an 11,000 square-foot, $1 million facility in Mountainair. He’s designed and manufactured Forest Service road signs all over the country, “coast to coast,” he said. Around 70 percent of the signs in New Mexico are churned out of the giant, blue building in Mountainair with “lots of cars parked around it,” Archuletta said. He also holds a patent for the road closure signs used in the national forest and BLM lands. Continue reading →

I, CoBot — Automation Offers Opportunities for NM Businesses and Workers

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Build With Robots participated in Mfg Day NM in 2018. Article by Claudia Infante, NM MEP; Photo by Jane Phillips

The way they see it at Albuquerque’s Build With Robots LLC (BWR), automation and human labor can exist side by side, even in small and medium-sized businesses, without the dystopian consequences imagined by many futurists and science fiction writers.

The New Mexico company works with manufacturers and other businesses to enhance their productivity and competitive advantage by incorporating “collaborative robots,” or CoBots, into the labor force to perform the more monotonous tasks so people can work where they are most valuable.

“Fill seasonal demand or vacancies,” BWR suggests on its website. “Off-load dangerous or dirty jobs. Free up your team to do more rewarding and higher-value work.” CoBots, the company stresses, augment rather than replace human resources. Continue reading →

The Taxman Cometh – For Gig Workers Too

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The gig economy makes it possible for thousands of Americans to join the ranks of self-employed people, whether they’re driving for hire or doing short-term assignments as accountants or writers or using a 3-D printer to manufacture products for others.

Such jobs offer flexibility and independence, but they come with the same obligations as any other sole proprietorship, including the responsibility to file a Schedule C form and pay self-employment taxes in addition to income taxes they might owe if the business is profitable. Continue reading →

Businesses Set Sights on Cybersecurity

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Jennifer Kurtz, cybersecurity expert at MEP. Article by Jason Gibbs.

Jennifer Kurtz quickly boils down the reasons small businesses should care about cybersecurity.

You want to keep your business, your reputation, your customers, your money and your people. You don’t like getting sued. And you want to sleep well.

Pretty hard to argue with that.

Kurtz, the Cyber Program Director at Manufacturer’s Edge, a Colorado-based nonprofit that works to boost the competitiveness of Colorado manufacturers through that state’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, shared her expertise with attendees of New Mexico MEP’s Manufacturing Day activities in Albuquerque last October. During the New Mexico MEP Manufacturing Summit, ‘Thinking Machines and Smart Workforce,’ Kurtz addressed the impact of cybersecurity, breaches and data theft.

Kurtz told the New Mexico MEP attendees she uses the phrase “Biz Burglary” when discussing what happens when phishing, ransomware or security breaches result in data being stolen or compromised. And, she says, it has led to financial loss and, in some cases, businesses having to close entirely. Continue reading →

State Offers Grants to Promote Tourism

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New Mexico attracts more visitors every year, but the state wants to further boost tourism and related revenue by expanding on successful programs like New Mexico True and the Cooperative Marketing Program (CoOp).

New Mexico True is a brand that businesses, governments and nonprofit organizations can use by partnering with the New Mexico Tourism Department. That involves demonstrating how the organization expresses or evokes the state’s distinctive landscapes, cultures, food, art or history.

The CoOp program gives local nonprofits, municipalities and tribal governments a financial incentive to market what’s uniquely New Mexican about their event or location and even participate in existing advertising campaigns. Through the CoOp program, state money is leveraged with money from other public entities to amplify media buying power for all involved parties. (Private businesses can contribute up to 50 percent of a public entity’s total CoOp investment.) Continue reading →

Startup Weekends Turbo-Charge Business Ideas

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Startup Weekend Albuquerque is Feb. 22 – 24, 2019 at WESST Enterprise Center.

Launching a business can take years — or it can take 54 hours of intense teamwork with experts and entrepreneurs who share a hunger to develop ideas into profitable enterprises.

Startup Weekends are just the place for such collaboration, and the next one planned for New Mexico happens Feb. 22-24 in Albuquerque.

Organized by small business development organization WESST, CNM Ingenuity, ABQid and with support from New Mexico Mutual Insurance, this Startup Weekend is a global project of Google for Entrepreneurs and Techstars. The goal is to create a supportive environment where budding entrepreneurs can pitch and fast-track a business idea through realistic feedback from peers and experts. Continue reading →