Free Help from Uncle Sam to Start or Expand Your Business. Fred Hess

office, “Our major consideration in approving the SBA portion of this loan was that under-utilized species such as mackerel, hake, herring, and scup, not widely consumed in the United States, would be processed and exported to foreign markets such as Japan, Spain, and other European countries.”

      The Huntress II employs forty workers, and annual sales in the first year were $2,400,000, substantially exceeding expectations. Sales doubled in the second year. Huntress, Inc. recently purchased a second ship for $1,200,000, which will employ up to fifteen new workers.

      “The fishing industry in Rhode Island has always been a risky business,” said Buddy Violet of Ocean State Business Development Authority (OSBDA). “But these new boats are to fishing what Babe Ruth was to baseball. Phenomenal!” Violet noted that SBA was a crucial partner in the project. The state of Rhode Island “could not have gone anywhere else to cinch the deal but the SBA,” he said.

Government at Apple’s Core

      An SBA-backed Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) provided $504,000 in equity financing to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founders of Apple Computer. The company made $42,000 in profit that year. Only fifteen years later, Apple Computer enjoyed annual sales of $6,300,000,000 and employed 10,000 people.

Mexican Restaurant Big Hit

      Who said SBA won’t back a startup restaurant?

      Mariano Martinez, Jr. gathered every resource he could to start a restaurant in Dallas’ Old Town Shopping Center. He had $5,000 of his own money, and he borrowed $5,000 from his father, $5,000 from a friend, and $51,000 from SBA. By year’s end, Martinez had 60 employees and annual sales of $350,000.

      Over the next twelve years, Martinez opened a second restaurant in Arlington, Texas, with SBA help ($390,000 loan), and another in Dallas with a $243,000 loan.

      Today, employment at the firm has increased to 200, and annual sales exceed $3,000,000. The original loan is paid off, while the others remain current.

How about a Joint

      Osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease, affects millions, sometimes requiring an implant. The SBA participated in many of the 300,000 joint procedures in operating rooms yearly. Here’s how.

      Giant pharmaceutical corporations traditionally manufacture orthopedic implants. The SBA took a chance on a small company in Warsaw, Indiana, called Biomet, whose first-year sales were only $17,000. It guaranteed a $500,000 loan to the owners, Dr. Dane Miller, Niles Noblitt, Jerry Ferguson, and Ray Harroff.

      Originally its four owners were the only employees. Biomet expanded to 530 workers and annual sales of over $55,000,000. The company’s phenomenal success -- due to technical innovations and rapid delivery of its implants -- has made it a fast growing NASDAQ (National Association of Security Dealers’ Automated Quotation System) company, and the fifth-largest manufacturer of orthopedic implant devices in the world.

Plenty of Bread in the U.S.

      Samir Saleh fled Lebanon when civil war broke out. He came to the U.S. and with his uncle’s help started a bakery.

      Uncle Moussa also “was aware of the resources of SBA,” according to Samir. At first there was a pessimistic assessment by a SCORE counselor and the internationally known baking consultant Frank Dadon. But soon, Fred Fried, a retired Westinghouse financial supervisor and SCORE counselor, was giving the Salehs help with business planning and accounting. Along the way, two SBA loans gave the Salehs a boost. A $100,000 loan covered new machinery and a small debt to a credit union. Three years later, an additional loan of $178,000 helped the bakery expand to four times its original size.

      “For people in our situation, SBA’s assistance is the best thing that ever existed,” said a grateful Samir. “Only in America could three young immigrant boys with little previous business experience come so far in ten short years.”

SCORE Classes in an Indiana Prison

      Richard Dasse of the Northwest Indiana Chapter of the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) recalls when he and his SCORE associate began providing management training seminars in a most unusual place -- an Indiana prison. ““Afraid? You bet we were. We feared for our safety, and we really wondered if anyone would be interested.”

      Now, after three years of providing assistance at the Westville Correctional Center, Dasse acknowledges, “This is not exactly a Sunday School atmosphere,” but adds: “We’re tremendously impressed. The interest is great, and we've encountered some brilliant individuals.”

      The courses offered at Westville, a medium-security institution located about an hour’s drive from Chicago, are similar to those a small business person might find "on the outside" -- a pre-business workshop, one on small business management, another on challenges specific to small business, and another on small business sales.

Intel -- A Giant in Byte-Size Chips

      It’s the eighth largest manufacturer of semiconductors in the world (and one of only three American companies in the top ten). It’s responsible for two of the major postwar innovations in microelectronics that have made today’s electronic age possible -- large-scale integrated (LSI) memory and the microprocessor. Its computer chips, software, and minicomputers drive everything from digital gasoline pumps to scanner cash registers in supermarkets.

      It’s Intel. And when it was a one-year-old baby company, with 218 employees and $565,874 in sales, it received SBA-backed Small Business Investment Company equity of $299,390. Today, Intel has 19,200 employees and annual sales of $1,900,000,000. It has often approached and even surpassed achievements of rivals Motorola and Texas Instruments -- two corporate giants when Intel was a startup small business.

      A large percentage of Intel’s total revenues come from abroad, making the company one of the top fifty U.S.-based manufacturing exporters. Who ever thought that a well placed bit of SBA-backed equity twenty years ago would be a key force in helping to fight our trade deficit?

Hardware Store in Wyoming

      The number one store in the 1,500-store coast-to-coast chain of hardware stores rests in the mountain town of Casper, Wyoming. Owner Ed Bratt claims, “If it hadn't been for the SBA loan, I doubt we’d have even got off the ground.”

      When Ed and Joyce Bratt tried to find funds to start a retail hardware store, banks shut them out. But by year’s end, SBA came to the rescue with a startup guaranteed loan of $175,000. “On opening day we sold twelve percent of our inventory,” Ed relates. No surprise that the loan was paid off in three years. With ten employees then, the Bratts now employ 39; their annual sales volume is $3,000,000.

Ice Cream Fails to Melt

      Life with the 140-year-old Applegate Farm in Montclair, New Jersey, was anything but bright for Betty Vhay. Since purchasing the dairy farm, Vhay had endured more than the usual set of hard knocks. Money was chronically low; neighbors brought a lawsuit against the farm over “loud” machinery that was making ice cream; she went through a bitter divorce. It seemed to her at times that the circumstances of the farm’s purchase were an ill omen. After losing an unborn child in an auto accident, she had taken $100,000 in settlement money to stake her future on Applegate Farm.

      Alone, and with two children to support, Vhay pulled out all stops in the search for money for the ice cream operation. Bank after bank turned her down as a credit risk. Then the Money Store Investment Corporation took a chance on Vhay and provided her with an SBA-guaranteed loan of $170,000. For the first time, she had working capital, was sole owner, and recorded her first profit.

      At first Vhay employed 10; today she employs 52, most