Tag Archives: New Mexico business

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 →

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 →

Predictive Analytics Isn’t Just for the Big Guys

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Image courtesy of Carlos Muza. Article by Sandy Nelson.

Predicting consumer behavior can be an obsession for businesses, no matter what their size. Big corporations dedicate entire departments to divining what people will want next so they can be first to offer it, and they invest massive amounts of money into predictive analytics—the mining of massive sets of data for patterns and trends in hopes of giving businesses a competitive edge by helping them predict the future.

Smaller businesses typically don’t have the means or need to invest in the sophisticated types of data crunching that their larger cousins do, but smaller-scale data analysis tools can help them track past and real-time trends and behaviors so they can make fact-based decisions about how to allocate resources. Continue reading →

Funds aim to spur growth of six Native American ventures

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Bison Star Naturals owners Jacquelene and Angelo McHorse with daughter Judy. Article by Damon Scott.

(note from editor: The RDC now manages the Tribal Economic Diversity Fund, more information here )

Bison Star Naturals is one of six enterprises that shared $60,000 of investment in 2018 as part of the Native American Venture Acceleration Fund program administered by the Regional Development Corporation. NA VAF aims to create jobs by boosting revenue and advancing the business goals of Native American-owned Northern New Mexico companies.

Jacquelene and Angelo McHorse, owners of Bison Star Naturals, sought the funds to launch a line of liquid jojoba and yucca root soap to augment the bar soaps and lotions the business is known for.

“We also are expanding our line to include our unscented lotion,” Jacquelene said. “The funding allows us to release a new product line and expand our current offerings — which are great leaps for our small business.” Continue reading →

Loan Keeps Bakery at Top of Critics’ Lists

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Pratt and Chris Morales in their Albuquerque bakery, Golden Crown Panaderia. Article by Sandy Nelson.

It’s one thing for a bakery to boast about its own tasty products, but it’s quite another for the publisher of a foodie blog to broadcast rave reviews from around the world and add a few superlatives of his own.

Gil Garduño, publisher of Gil’s Thrilling (and Filling) Blog, has eaten at more than 1,000 New Mexico restaurants over the past decade and calls Golden Crown Panaderia “the very best bakery in Albuquerque.” In a mouth-watering 2016 review, Garduño describes the artisan breads, pizzas and pastries that the family-owned, Old Town-area business has been making since 1972 and adds, “This humble Panaderia has been consistently ranked by TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel community, as one of the top five out of 1,235 restaurants in the Duke City. Golden Crown receives similar praise from Yelp, while Lonely Planet, a French publication, calls Golden Crown ‘Albuquerque’s best place to eat.’ ” Continue reading →

Delegation Equals Liberation for Small Business Owners

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Product shipment preparation is one task that could be delegated. Article by Sandy Nelson.

Sooner or later, an entrepreneur has to know his limits and acknowledge that some tasks can and should be done by others to allow him to focus on the bigger picture. That requires delegation — trusting others, whether subordinates, partners or independent contractors, to complete an assignment as directed.

As obvious as that sounds, an entrepreneur can have a hard time trusting others with his “baby,” ultimately defeating many business objectives and stunting the company’s natural growth.

Many businesses in New Mexico start small, with the owner doing all the work that’s required to get off the ground. Success only increases the workload, and the owner who doesn’t delegate eventually will find her attention pulled away from mission-critical decisions into fussing with day-to-day minutia — answering phones or emails from clients or vendors, filing, blogging — or running in place trying to accomplish tasks outside her expertise. Continue reading →

Even a Small Management Team is Essential to Startup Success

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Article by Sandy Nelson

While it’s normal for the owner of a new business to go the do-it-yourself route, either for lack of money or sparse human resources, no one individual can perform every task associated with nurturing a startup and do all of them well.

The person who sets the idea in motion might not have a clue how to keep books and end up avoiding this essential skill in pursuit of more interesting or gratifying activities, such as networking and prototype creation. Continue reading →