Author Archives: Taura Costidis

A Month for Manufacturing: New Mexico Stretches out Mfg Day Celebration

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By Finance New Mexico

Manufacturing Day 2015 tour at Santa Fe Spirits

Manufacturing Day 2015 tour at Santa Fe Spirits; photo by Jane Phillips

Manufacturing is so important to New Mexico that sponsors of this year’s statewide Manufacturing Day (Mfg Day) celebration are dedicating the entire month of October to raising public awareness and appreciation of this bedrock industry.

Aside from organizing the facility tours that have been central to New Mexico’s participation in the nationwide event since 2013, the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) is collaborating with maker spaces, museums, schools and youth groups to develop interactive activities to inspire young people to pursue manufacturing careers. Continue reading →

New Mexico Employers Should Plan Now for New Overtime Rules

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By Randy S. Bartell and Randi N. Johnson, Montgomery & Andrews, PA, Employment Law Group

flsa-overtime-graphicbyfnmAbout 20,000 salaried “white-collar” employees in New Mexico might be eligible for overtime pay in 2017 when an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) takes effect the last day of this year.

The U.S. Department of Labor in May published its final rule revising the FLSA’s overtime exemption regulations. The most significant change was to the minimum salary levels that salaried employees must be paid to be considered exempt from federal overtime requirements. Continue reading →

Multigenerational Workforce Can Be Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

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By Finance New Mexico

Multigenerational workforceThe generation gap of the early 21st century is different than the one that led sociologists to coin that term in the 1960s, when young adult baby boomers were advised not to trust anyone over 30.

Today’s workplace might include people in their late teens up to their 70s. Managing that multigenerational mélange presents many of the same challenges as managing a multicultural one, but it also offers a rich resource for businesses that understand the strengths and benefits of diversity and appreciate that every employee, regardless of age, wants to work with others toward a common goal and feel productive and valued. Continue reading →

Relationship Figures Big in Six-Year Journey to Start Pet-Care Business

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Photo courtesy Pet Planet Hotel and Day Camp

Photo courtesy Pet Planet Hotel and Day Camp

By Finance New Mexico

By the time they had adopted seven dogs from friends and neighbors, David and Juliana Garcia concluded that Las Cruces sorely needed a business that served animals and the people who love them.

The couple bought a van with their savings to start a mobile grooming business for large pets. By the time they were ready to buy a second van to accommodate their growing client base, the Garcias were thinking about opening a hotel and day camp, with spa services on the side, for dogs and cats. Continue reading →

Entrepreneurs Work Together to Get Help From Lab-Affiliated Program

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By Finance New Mexico

Greg Scantlen, Chuck Bulow, and Paul Saxe

Left to right: Greg Scantlen, Chuck Bulow, and Paul Saxe

Entrepreneurs Greg Scantlen, Paul Saxe and Chuck Bulow depend on high-speed, sophisticated computers to run their individual businesses. And even though they’re developing different products, the trio decided to apply collectively for free technical assistance from scientists at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories through the New Mexico Small Business Assistance (NMSBA) program.

Scantlen owns CreativeC, a Los Alamos and Albuquerque company that works with graphic processing units (GPUs) — chips composed of thousands of parallel processing threads that can process multiple calculations simultaneously at computing speeds about 100 times faster than the traditional central processing units (CPU) used by most home computers. Continue reading →

LEDA Program Boosts Local Economic Development

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By Finance New Mexico and William Fulginiti, Executive Director of the New Mexico Municipal League

Tucumcari’s Odeon Theatre, which received funding in 2015

Tucumcari’s Odeon Theatre, which received funding in 2015

The City of Tucumcari generates $110,000 each year for economic development projects from a local tax on gross receipts, and the community gets lots of mileage from it.

In 2015, the city collaborated with the Greater Tucumcari Economic Development Corporation to invest locally generated tax revenue in four private projects through a process allowed by the Local Economic Development Act (LEDA). Continue reading →

Businesses Find Advice at UNM Small Business Institute

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By Finance New Mexico

SBI client with UNM Anderson students and UNM professor Dr. Raj Mahto; courtesy UNM Anderson School of Management website

SBI client with UNM Anderson students and UNM professor Dr. Raj Mahto; courtesy UNM Anderson School of Management website

Albuquerque transplant Chris Mayo was 47 when he decided to ditch social work and build his chimney sweep/masonry/handyman sideline into a full-time business. Within a decade, Amrak Enterprises was growing by 30 percent each year and Mayo was paying a subcontractor to help with the workload and aiming to compete with the city’s top chimney-cleaning company.

“I’m 57 years old and need to position myself to either sell the business and be a silent partner or manage a fleet of chimney sweeps,” Mayo told Finance New Mexico. To help him prepare for the future, Mayo took the advice of his friend Dimitri Kapelianis, associate professor of marketing at the University of New Mexico School of Management. Continue reading →

New Mexico Angels Welcome Entrepreneurs to Monthly ‘Office Hours’ at WESST

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New Mexico Angels President John Chavez at the 2016 Angel Capital Summit in Denver; photo courtesy New Mexico Angels

By Finance New Mexico

The folks at WESST never stop thinking of new ways to help small businesses succeed and thus strengthen New Mexico’s economy.

The 27-year-old nonprofit’s newest partnership is with New Mexico Angels — a 501(c)6 organization that, besides its educational and promotional mission, acts as an intermediary between its members and early stage businesses that present promising investment opportunities.

NMA (www.NMAngels.com) has been around since 1999. Just this year the organization began hosting office hours from 3 to 5 p.m. on the first Monday of each month at the WESST Enterprise Center in Albuquerque so entrepreneurs can seek information and advice about financing and angel investing. Continue reading →

Makerspaces Nurture Business Development by Offering Workspace, Tools

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By Finance New Mexico

FUSE Makerspace

Photo courtesy CNM Ingenuity Inc Facebook page

Uncertainty about the commercial viability of an innovation or idea — in addition to the cost of renting or buying the machinery needed to build a working prototype — has stifled many an entrepreneurial impulse. But the makerspace movement that’s gaining a foothold in several New Mexico communities is trying to change that.

Makerspaces offer access to expensive equipment and expert mentoring that innovators need to turn a concept into something tangible. Their advocates see them as cauldrons of entrepreneurism and economic development — as early-stage business incubators. Continue reading →

Local Manufacturers Empowered by Visual-Workplace Training

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Visual Workshop Participant Discussion_First Choice

Left to right: Armando Soto (in Orange sweatshirt) of Relios, Phillip Vanderwall of MARPAC, Kent Dahlinger of Relios and Christina McGrady of La Puerta Originals; photo courtesy Visual Lean Institute

By Finance New Mexico

Armando Soto is a convert to the visual-workplace concept. The director of operational excellence at Albuquerque jewelry-maker Relios Inc. attended a two-day workshop this spring that was sponsored by the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership. He came away with the tools he needed to put Relios on the path to being a fully functional visual workplace.

The point of visual-workplace training, according to guest speaker Gwendolyn Galsworth, Ph.D., founder of the Visual-Lean Institute, is to “convert the physical (work) environment into a visual one” and “to share vital information about the task at hand at a glance, without speaking a word — in short, to let the workplace speak.” Continue reading →