By Finance New Mexico
Planning in business isn’t just a matter of deciding how to assign capital and resources to create a profitable venture. Equally essential is developing a distance vision.
The most effective business leaders are planners and visionaries with creative, dynamic and specific ideas about where they want their company to be three years or five years from now. Their focus is “macro” and “micro”: Continue reading
By Kristelle Siarza, Online Account Executive, The Garrity Group Public Relations
It’s not enough to have a physical presence in a world where business is conducted around the planet and around the clock. The most competitive businesses operate in cyberspace as well, because that’s where their customers are — shopping, researching, discussing and buying.
New Mexico residents turn increasingly to digital resources when seeking out all types of information. According to the most recent (2013) annual Garrity Perception Survey, New Mexicans use television as a news and information source 58 percent of the time, newspaper 39 percent of the time and internet news sites 29 percent of the time. Those sources are followed by radio (28 percent), internet blogs (17 percent) and social networking sites (17 percent). When internet news sources, blogs and social media are combined, New Mexico residents turn to digital sources 63 percent of the time, Continue reading
By Jocelyn Barrett, Attorney at Law, Montgomery & Andrews, P.A.
There are many circumstances under which an employee and employer part ways. An employee can choose to leave a job, or the company may make a unilateral decision to end the employment relationship. Whatever the case, the separation should be documented in writing to protect both parties.
For the employee’s benefit, a separation agreement should detail in writing what the employer intends to provide at the parting. These might include the final paycheck, severance pay, pay-out of unused vacation or sick time and/or any continuation of coverage under the company’s health-care plan.
For the employer, an agreement can help protect against some potential lawsuits and clarify what the employee agreed to provide the company when hired. Continue reading
By Cathy Sorenson, Community Development Officer, The Loan Fund
Opening a business that sells authentic, made-from-scratch Italian gelato requires substantial startup capital, which is why Daniel Romero and Lori Griego worked hard to get the right ingredients to finance their Frost Gelato Shoppe franchise.
While approval was quick from The Loan Fund, a private nonprofit micro-lender in New Mexico, the amount of money the pair needed to launch the business required contributions from two other parties: micro-lender ACCION and Los Alamos National Bank.
It was worth the effort, Romero said. Business is better than he anticipated at the franchise’s ABQ Uptown mall site — especially considering that his frozen-dessert shop opened in late November, on the cusp of a bone-chilling winter. Continue reading
By Karen Converse, New Mexico MEP
After 32 years as president of Jack’s Plastic Welding, Jack Kloepher wanted to see if his company was ready to begin exporting three of its most promising products: stand-up inflatable paddle boards and pontoon boats for recreationists, and rapid deployable spill containment units for the oil and gas industry.
So Kloepher and partner Errol Baade enrolled in the ExporTech class offered by New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership in collaboration with the New Mexico Economic Development Department and other partners.
By Bill Hartman, President and CEO, Ion Linac Systems, and President, The W. Hartman Group
I’m not a venture capitalist, but I’ve headed up several successful technology startups and recently ran an early stage software company that raised almost $2 million in “seed stage” funding. I’m now leading a pre-revenue New Mexico startup raising our first equity-based funding.
As anyone who has done this knows, raising startup funding in New Mexico is challenging — partially because our state is relatively isolated from the national playing field, but also because of the challenges the New Mexico and broader US venture capital communities have faced meeting the returns expected by their investors and the VCs’ ability to raise new investment capital. The amount of venture capital available has decreased as the initial funding of 8-10 years ago has been fully deployed in startup companies, but exits and positive returns from those investments have so far been relatively few.
By Mariann Johnston, Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation
Los Alamos National Laboratory has a stockpile of patents covering technologies with untapped commercial potential, and it wants to simplify the process of sharing these innovations — as well as its portfolio of copyright-protected software — with businesses that can translate this wealth into private-sector jobs.
The lab’s Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation (FCI) in August launched the Express Licensing program to fast-track the licensing of technologies and software with a simple online application. The application template standardizes licensing terms and makes it possible for LANL to share inventions on a broader scale without making potential partners and customers undergo exhaustive individualized negotiations. Continue reading
By William Fulginiti, Executive Director, New Mexico Municipal League
Robin Hartrow, partner in the Alamogordo nonprofit spay-neuter clinic All About the Animals, didn’t have time before opening her business last October to look carefully through a “welcome packet” of information she received while registering her business at City Hall. Continue reading
By Finance New Mexico
To stand out in a market saturated with consumer products and get the attention of consumers deluged with advertising appeals, an entrepreneur needs to offer a product or service with obvious benefits and unquestionable superiority over the competition.
That isn’t as easy as it sounds. The history of U.S. commerce is littered with countless products whose inventors misjudged the market’s appetite or need.
By Scott Gray, D’Ann L. Brown Customs Broker
International trade supports about 218,000 jobs in New Mexico — about one in five jobs — at companies of all sizes, according to the New Mexico-based Business Roundtable. While exports bring money to New Mexico producers in an obvious way, imports also bring money to the state by supplying materials that keep the state’s manufacturers and retailers competitive.
In 2010, 1,056 New Mexico companies imported products to sell or use in manufacturing. Nearly 64 percent of these importers were small businesses with fewer than 20 employees. Continue reading