Nico Ortiz needed money in 2001 after exhausting the startup capital that helped him launch Turtle Mountain Brewing Company in Rio Rancho two years earlier. But without a five-year track record, he said, “no lender would touch me.”
Loan officers suggested Accion New Mexico, and there Ortiz’s luck changed. “It wasn’t a big loan,” he said. “Maybe $20,000. But it enabled me to get over the hump” and sustain the business until its fifth birthday, when traditional lenders were willing to lend. Today the company employs nearly three times as many people as it did in 1999, and its gross revenue has quadrupled.
“Accion is critical, because the (business) failure rate for zero to five years — especially for restaurants — is ginormous,” Ortiz said. “They help fine companies survive.” Continue reading