About half the private sector jobs in this country are in small businesses. Women comprise a third of small business owners nationwide. But in Floyd Virginia, where county officials held a contest for the best new small business plans, 100% of the winners were women.
In parts 1 and 2 of this report, you met some of them. Today we meet the others.
Floyd County is known for its creative people, and the Economic Development Business challenge that kicked off this spring was designed to find them. The timing was perfect for Jolie Greatorex and Theda Anderson, who both work at Red Rooster Coffee Roasters and share a love of baking. Greatorex says they’d been dabbling around creating flavor extracts to go into coffee and cakes served there.
“So we just had this idea this idea of doing, like vanilla and lavender and peppermint and doing all these delicious blends.
The six-week small business plan challenge, with its classes, lectures and coaching by professionals, helped them plan their market strategy. They had to identify what suggested it might work and at the same time, what made it unique.
There’s a cocktail revival going on now and you hear about coffee bitters and the extracting of bitters is similar to flavor extracts, so we will be saying well, ‘hey, you can put these in your cocktails too.’
In the interest of keeping their product local and organic were looking for the right type of alcohol to make their extracts.
"And then Theda – a light bulb went off and she’s like, ‘moonshine!’ Traditionally you use a clear spirit like vodka or something like that, but it doesn’t have a lot of flavor. Why not moonshine?
Another new local business, 5 Mile Mountain Distillery would supply the moonshine. Playing off the nostalgia of Appalachian traditions, they decided to call their company JT Copper. Jolie and Theda’s initials, and a nod to the copper stills moonshine is made in. But if creating these products came naturally to Anderson and Greatorex, they’re not sure it would ever have become a business if they hadn’t heard about what we’re calling the Kinder Gentler Shark Tank sponsored by Floyd County’s Economic Development Authority with a grant from Virginia’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
Theda Anderson says, “We’re so appreciative they did this because I don’t know how long this would have remained, sort of, table top discussion. And this made us sit down and write a business plan or an executive summary and that made us really start crunching numbers.’
They attended classes and lectures at the new Floyd Innovation Center, a commerce park in town designed to attract new small businesses, capitalizing on the creativity for which this area is well known. The mentoring and training program is called C-4 for Creators, Curriculum, Coaches and Challenge.John Beegle chairman of the Economic Development Authority of Floyd County.
“ I think we kind of depend on that creativity to support our economy. It’s what makes our economy strong, so rather than depending on a large manufacturing company or textile company to supply a bunch of jobs, having a lot of people with businesses that only support 2 or 3 or 5 people really makes us a little bit stronger as an economy.
Community and Development Director Lydeana Martin, who created the business challenge, says communities also benefit when more people don’t leave town every day for their jobs.
“Nearly 70% of the labor force commutes out of the county for work so for every 5 or 10 people that we can keep at home that’s five or 10 people that aren’t doing their shopping while they’re out in another community and they’re buying locally. People are more available for volunteering at the school or rescue squad. There’s a real ripple effect that’s possible whenever more people have an opportunity to work in their home community.
At a time when many communities are becoming indistinguishable from one another, home grown small businesses may play a role in preserving the rich character of remote rural areas like Floyd. And with high tech tools, such as its vaunted high speed Internet, new businesses could flourish in places that may not seem so remote any more.
