As young little ones, Jackie Jimenez and her sisters built band instruments out of cardboard bins and jammed to songs on their distinctive drums and guitars.
“Mom and Dad taught us to work with what we have,” Jimenez recalled.
Rapid ahead to right now and that resourcefulness has served Jimenez and her sisters, Valerie Young and Christine Griffith, to get started their very own reward organization. Younger started off promoting reasonably priced selfmade crafts at a church strange and then coaxed her sisters to be a part of forces with her.
The sisters will be among the 70 to 80 vendors who will showcase their items and look for new staff at the Southern Colorado Smaller Business Growth Center’s Small Company Expo and Employing Event from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Could 4, at Pueblo Group College’s university student center, 900 W. Orman Ave.
Economical gifts with a homemade contact
The small presents the sisters offer are a small-price tag solution for shoppers hunting for Mother’s Working day, graduation, Father’s Working day or birthday gifts. They give every little thing from refrigerator magnets and dish scrubbers to coin purses and puzzle publications, embroidered angel bookmarks and lanyards.
The sisters are creating attractive flowerpots with inspirational sayings that will sell for involving $5 and $10. They also make some distinctive sock monkeys, clip-on hand sanitizer holders and sweet treats.
Jimenez’s motto is “if I won’t pay out that a great deal for it, I won’t demand that much for it,” she explained with a chuckle.
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“I do stitching, portray, wood cutting and make scrapbooking playing cards,” Jimenez mentioned.
Via her “real” career at the Southern Colorado Small Company Progress Middle in Pueblo she has discovered how to sign-up her enterprise, marketplace on the web and transfer considerably of her “Crafty Creations” gross sales to an ETSY shop.
“I was so amazed where all of these men and women saw my perform and requested it on the internet. It was neat to see it heading to destinations like New York, California, Idaho, Texas and Pennsylvania,” she stated.
A person product, a snowman ornament with a pouch for income or a present card, flew off the shelves. She bought a lot more than 50 last December.
Other than the sisters’ craft things, the expo will function dozens of area compact businesses providing all types of merchandise.
Area businesses will recruit workers in a area established apart for on-the-spot interviews, mentioned Brian Estrada, government director for the Southern Colorado Small Company Advancement Heart.
The function also will contain informational and academic presentations. The expo is aspect of the center’s Little Business Week celebration Could 1-7 which contains website lessons and the start of a brown bag lunch collection on the 1st Friday of just about every thirty day period.
How compact organizations can get help
The expo is a way for the business enterprise development center staff to get the word out about the companies the middle offers.
“A great deal of individuals really do not know what we do,” Estrada said. “Our mission is to enable present and new companies to mature and prosper.”
That incorporates consulting, schooling and academic sources.
“What’s intriguing about our middle is we can assist new begins or existing corporations that want to scale up or pivot,” Estrada reported. “We give cost-free private consulting, education and e-commerce classes, and connect company owners to methods.”
Among the those people sources are information and facts on locations to apply for grants or trainings on how to put together to talk to a banker about a enterprise mortgage.
“We can even help organization entrepreneurs who are searching to promote their corporations,” said Carma Loontjer, coordinator.
Pueblo’s compact enterprise improvement heart is the only 1 in the point out that has partnered with Southern Colorado Innovation Connection to enable inventors get their strategies from conception to prototype to patent.
Mark Madic oversees the Southern Colorado Innovation Backlink application, which grew to become the very first startup and tech accelerator plan in the region, he explained.
“We target on organizations needing assistance to acquire rewarding marketable assets, obtain patents or introduce them to companies that will help them elevate nontraditional capital. We get to do a ton of innovative early-phase things for firms,” Madic explained.
To uncover out far more about the growth heart or to signal up for a $25 vendor booth at the expo, phone 719-549-3245 or log onto southerncoloradosbdc.org.
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Chieftain reporter Tracy Harmon handles organization news. She can be reached by electronic mail at [email protected] or by way of Twitter at twitter.com/tracywumps.
This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo compact business expo presenting sales, task good May perhaps 4
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