10/16/11
By Vic Kolenc El Paso Times
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Insurance, modeling and pizza sauce flow through their veins as does a strong entrepreneurial spirit.
They are young El Paso women entrepreneurs who’ve turned their passions into new businesses.
Starting a business is never easy, but it’s even tougher for a young woman in tough economic times, said Olga Tavárez, director of the El Paso Community College Small Business Development Center.
It remains a male-dominated business market, Tavárez said.
Crystal Martinez, 29, who’s been selling insurance since she was 17 years old, opened her own State Farm insurance office on the far East Side in April. She sells State Farm products, but the business is her own. She invested about $50,000 of her savings to open it, she said.
“This is a perfect fit for me. I’m good at it,” said Martinez, who has a degree in mass communication and business from the University of Texas at El Paso.
Martinez is ranked 150th in sales among 1,700 State Farm agents nationwide, she noted. But she said she won’t be happy until she cracks the top 10.
Jacqueline Garcia, 24, who’s been entering beauty pageants and modeling since she was 14 and who worked several years for several modeling agencies, opened Bazaar Models, an El Paso modeling agency, in July 2009. That was shortly after she graduated from UTEP with a degree in electronic media. She opened it with her fiancé, Ronnie Martinez, who works full time at a car dealership.
“I didn’t think much about the economy when I started
the business,” Garcia said. “It took a lot of knocking on doors, a lot of cold calls. It’s a business I believed in.”
Bazaar has 150 models under contract, and the agency began turning a profit after about nine months of operation, she said.
Tanya Loya, 21, who worked in her grandfather’s pizzerias in Juárez while growing up, decided to put a possible career in politics on hold to open Gino’s Pizza on the far East Side in January with her mother, Adriana Loya, 47. She moved back from Washington, D.C., where she got a job after graduating from UTEP in 2009 with a degree in political science and international politics.
“I love making pizza, but I never thought it would be a profession,” Tanya Loya said. “You never understand what you truly love until it happens.”
Gino’s had a rough launch because it had to close for a month in the summer after its oven broke and a replacement had to be shipped from New York, Tanya Loya said.
“Domino’s opened next to us after we opened, and Little Caesars is several blocks away. … That affects our sales,” Tanya Loya said.
“It was slow at first. But the business has been doing well recently,” Tanya Loya said. “Our family has been in (various businesses) long enough to know what it takes to run this.”
Tavárez said a startup has a better chance of succeeding if the owner has experience in the industry in which the business operates — and an even better chance if the owner also has a passion for that field.
Lenders usually require the owner of a startup or one of the managers of the business to have at least three years of experience in the entrepreneur’s chosen business field before they will consider lending money to the business, she noted.
And while women have made inroads in the business world, it remains less common for a woman to start a business on her own in El Paso, Tavárez said.
Men made up more than half of the 624 people who came to the Small Business Development Center in the past 12 months for counseling to open a new business, she reported. Thirty percent of the startups seeking help had a woman and man involved. Only 17 percent were solely women.
Martinez said being a woman in the insurance business has pluses and minuses.
Women manage the finances of the majority of households in this country, Martinez said. That makes it easy for her to relate to the wife when dealing with household insurance and other financial needs that a State Farm office handles, she said.
“When I’m dealing with male business owners (about commercial insurance), it takes longer to build a rapport,” she said.
Being a mother is a definite business asset for Estrella Ramirez, 34. She used her thirst for information on parenting and kid-friendly events as a springboard to create epParent.com, an online guide to the El Paso parent and kid scene, in September 2009. A few months later, she brought in her sister-in-law, Itze Bernal, 31, a former teacher and mother of two boys, ages 2 and 4, as a partner.
“I wanted to have my own business and be able to spend time with my kids,” two girls, ages 3 and 8, Ramirez said. “This gives me flexibility of owning my own time.” She previously owned a magazine for kids and sold it, she said. Her husband also owns a business.
EpParent.com, which makes its money from ads and paid listings, makes a profit, Ramirez said. The site gets about 30,000 hits a month, she reported.
Tavárez said it’s not unusual for a startup to take up to three years to become profitable. That’s why a new business needs a cushion of cash, about six months worth of operating expenses, stashed away to cover unexpected events, she said.
“A lot of people take money out of a business to pay for personal expenses. They are draining the cash flow,” Tavárez said.
The first 18 months to three years of operation are critical because that’s when many new businesses fail, she said.
“A startup company has a better chance of survival after five years,” Tavárez said.
Starting a new business requires research to determine the competition and “who you are targeting,” Tavárez said. “You should have a business plan” that is re-examined periodically, she said. “You need a road map for where the business is going.”
Martinez, the State Farm agency owner, said starting any business is risky.
Her survival chances are enhanced by a nine-month State Farm training program she went through before opening her office, Martinez said. She also gets ongoing support from State Farm, she said.
“I need to grow this business fast,” Martinez said. That’s why she already has five employees, only half of whom are selling insurance, she said. “My goal is to have satellite offices” in other areas of El Paso, she said.
The other entrepreneurs also have their eyes on expansion.
Garcia, at Bazaar Models, started with a desk, phone and laptop in a small, shared office, and she had to sell her 2002 Mercedes, a college graduation gift, to help finance her startup. Now she’s looking at opening a second office in Albuquerque next year.
“There’s always room for growth. I’m always looking for new ways to expand,” Garcia said.
Ramirez, at epParent.com, said she’s received inquiries from people who want to start similar websites in other cities.
“We may branch out,” she said.
Loya said Gino’s first location was picked because it’s across the street from El Dorado High School and is in a fast-growing area.
“Lunches are packed” because of the high school, she said.
Now, Loya has her eyes on future locations — possibly by UTEP, where she’s pursing a master’s degree in intelligence and national security while also working daily at Gino’s. Northeast El Paso is another possible location, she said.
“I like having my own business,” Loya said. “You can set your hours. And have a vision, and go with it.”
Vic Kolenc may be reached at vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; 546-6421.
