By Megan Taros
The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Susie Rios is trying to change the trajectory for many latina owned businesses. Her women’s business center offers six-week courses at every stage of ownership to connect budding entrepreneurs with resources which is especially crucial for so many women at this time.
Twin Falls
Field workers lined up every Friday under the long shade of a lush tree on the edge of the potato fields in Burley when a 10-year-old Susie Rios stood at her father’s side at the table he set up to distribute the weekly earnings. He calculated how many acres his laborers had worked and gave each of them a handful of cash.
Seeing that sight week after week made a young Rios want to join them in that line and take money home to her family. It was a desire to earn her own income and help her low-income family. Her father was hesitant at first — unsure if he could watch out for her and keep her safe — but she persisted.
Before long, she was riding on the school bus her father owned to pick up workers from the labor camp and drive them to the fields. She was no longer an observer. For years to come, she would tie a gunnysack around her waist at harvest and drag it along the rows until it ballooned to 100 pounds, lumpy and fat with potatoes.
“I wasn’t able to go play because I was in the field,” Rios said.
Rios has a knack for business, while some groups such as Latinos and women that have been historically underserved may find it difficult to get off the ground.
Businesses owned and operated by Latinos in Idaho, however, are growing and working to meet legal, financial, home and wellness needs of the communities they serve. The number of new Latinos is outpacing that of their non-Hispanic counterparts, as Latino-owned businesses grew by 62% between 2007 and 2012, while non-Hispanic businesses dropped by 3% during that same time.
In 2018, the Treasure Valley-based Hispanic Chamber of Commerce opened a chapter in Twin Falls to serve Magic Valley business owners. In that time the chamber worked to sponsor cultural events and workshops to empower Latinos to be active in their communities and enhance their business and financial skills. So much growth and demand in less than two years led the chapter to break away in late February to become its own entity, the South Central Idaho Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Still, despite their $1.7 trillion in buying power nationwide and their rapid growth in business, Latinos remain underrepresented overall.
The ownership of business helps bring members from a diverse range of communities to the table, and when there’s not a diversity of owners certain demographics may find that their needs aren’t met.
Making an investment
Rios’ entrepreneurial spirit didn’t stop in the fields. As an adult, she opened a boutique in Burley called Plaza Azteca, and she continues to have a hand in her husband’s business, J.R. Pivot. She and her husband have passed on their work ethic to their children, who used to help the pivot business by doing field surveys.
“It was important to us to teach our children that it’s important to work even if you are in school and what it takes to run a business,” Rios said.
Her children also helped her run Plaza Azteca, where they learned customer-service skills and how to handle money. When they left for university, she was running the business alone, working another job and helping her husband with his business.
She decided something had to change on a day she had so much on her mind that she had to pull over on the side of the road, unaware of her surroundings. Within two years she closed Plaza Azteca.
Her commitment and the stresses she experienced helped her on her way to becoming the director of the Idaho Women’s Business Center in Twin Falls.
Prospective business owners don’t always know where to begin. That’s where the business center comes in.
It offers six-week courses at every stage of ownership to connect budding entrepreneurs with resources, to figure out their business plan and mission statement, as well as find out if their chosen business is the right fit for them. Even then, some may find it difficult to break away from their other responsibilities, but Rios said prioritizing their business is essential to success.
“You have to find time,” Rios said. “You have to make that investment. There is no other way.”
A different way of doing business
Cultural differences sometimes mean that Latinos do business differently than their peers. Magic Valley business leaders said that it’s common for Latinos to avoid traditional avenues of marketing and tend to rely on word-of-mouth referrals and social media. There is also a tendency to deal exclusively in cash, from seed money to payroll. But these practices are risky and can hurt the owner’s chances of success.
“(Latinos) prefer not to do the paperwork . . . we want to teach them the benefit of doing things the right way,” Rios said. “In many countries, they weren’t taught that way. It’s how they’re used to doing things.”
When Alex Castañeda assumed the role of board liaison for the Twin Falls chapter of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which began in 2018, there were hardly any Latinos in the Twin Falls Chamber of Commerce. That makes it difficult to reach out to Latino business owners who may already be wary of formal institutions.
Latinos are more likely to use small community banks and credit unions as opposed to national banks to fund their business and tend to have more success when working with them, according to a 2018 Stanford University study on national Latino business trends.
The same study found that developing a personal relationship with their banker played a key role in that success.
South Central Idaho Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is looking to create a connection with the local community, now that it’s not tied to a larger organization in the Treasure Valley. While he doesn’t believe there’s any single reason Latinos don’t join their local chamber, Castañeda said appropriate outreach is important.
“Who do you usually see running the chamber?” he said. “It’s people who haven’t really been engaging to (Latinos).”
In Jerome, where business is such that even non-Hispanic businesses are marketing to the community with signs in Spanish and recruiting staff who speak Spanish, its chamber of commerce sometimes struggles to attract Latino business owners. It is working to change that through a task force dedicated to pursuing membership from Hispanic-owned businesses. The chamber also plans to start printing its materials in Spanish and has sought help from Spanish-speakers to help translate for Spanish-speaking clients.
“We spent quite a bit of time studying this,” Cheryl Viola, director of the Jerome Chamber of Commerce, said of the chamber’s efforts to examine the low membership rates of Latinos. “Even things like (Latinos’) marketing strategies don’t take the same shape of other business owners.”
This reticence to join the chamber is a missed opportunity for becoming visible to the community, Viola said. In 2019 alone, the chamber’s website received more than 22,000 views, mostly for its member guide.
“The biggest benefit is not only that it gives your business better visibility, but consumers will do more business with chamber members,” she said. “Obviously it makes a big difference, especially when looking at the demand out here in Southern Idaho.”
Younger owners making strides
Younger Latinos and Latina women are shaping the future of Latino businesses and are exploring traditional avenues to ownership such as obtaining degrees and enrolling in courses put on by their regional chamber of commerce. Thirty-three percent of Latino business owners are under 45, according to the 2018 Stanford University study.
Sergio Mendoza practically grew up at La Campesina Market, his father’s restaurant and Mexican grocery store in Jerome. He immersed himself in it to the point that business was second nature, leading him to pursue a degree in business.
“It was the lifestyle,” Mendoza said. “I got used to it. And I know what it takes to be self-employed and a small-business owner.”
Mendoza now owns Liquidation Center, a discount furniture store on Main Street in Jerome, and is a member of the chamber of commerce. His familiarity with the community and his desire to serve it brought him back. He said his point of pride in his work doesn’t necessarily come from being Latino and a business owner.
“I do it to support the community,” he said. “It’s not really about what the chamber (of commerce) can do for me, but what I can do to give to my community.”
Rosario Tellez’s decision to continue her family’s bakery business — and to open two new locations — wasn’t as clear for her as Mendoza’s decision was for him. She tried to embark on a new venture of her own and obtained her esthetician’s license but became too impatient to build her clientele.
Tellez grew up at her family’s business, La Michoacana, which, after 25 years, still operates today. Her parents started baking when they arrived in the U.S. as a way to support the family. They sold bread door to door — a common practice in their native Mexico — until they were able to afford a truck that they could drive to processing plants and other major employers to attract customers.
Tellez opened a location in Bellevue but wanted to be closer to home, so in November she opened La Michoacana’s newest location in Twin Falls. She said its continued success comes from her family working together.
“When a business expands, the quality goes down,” Tellez told the Times-News when she first opened. “But with this, it’s not just (my dad). He has me, my mom, my sister behind him.”
The business landscape for Latinos looks different than it did when Tellez was a child helping her parents put sugar on top of sweet bread. More young Latinos are taking the initiative and continuing family business or starting their own and making themselves visible in the community.
“It is growing enormously,” Tellez said. “For me it makes me happy. It kind of makes me feel like our people are on the rise, too. We’re out here trying to make something of ourselves as well.”
Tellez hopes that with time there is more of a diversity of clientele at Hispanic businesses so that people who are not Latino can experience different ideas and cultures.
Making a seat at the table
Groups such as Latinos and women of all races historically have a lack of access to capital and business education. A 2017 Small Business Credit Study by the Federal Reserve Banks revealed that 45% of Latinos were denied small-business loans for insufficient credit while 37% were denied for having too low a credit score. This does not necessarily mean the end of the road for disenfranchised groups.
“Lack of access is not to say there are no resources. There are,” Rios said. “If someone gets denied for a loan we can connect them to someone who can help with their case.”
Language can complicate getting help. Viola and Larry Hall, director of the economic-development group Jerome 20/20, are the primary contacts for new business owners, but neither speak Spanish, Viola said. That means they have to look for someone who can translate before they can help a Spanish-speaking client.
Having materials available in someone’s primary language affords them comfort and confidence needed to be able to build their business.
“Just because we provide something in English and Spanish doesn’t mean it’s because they don’t understand English,” Rios said. “It’s so they can express themselves in their primary language, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
The Women’s Business Center has partnered with the U.S. Small Business Administration in Boise, the Small Business Commerce Association and the Twin Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, while the South Central Idaho Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has paired with the Twin Falls chamber, Jerome chamber and banks like the Idaho Central Credit Union.
These partnerships are important so that these respective organizations can expand their reach and help more people. Bringing Latinos to the discussion needs to start with connections from community leaders who have earned their trust, Rios said.
“It comes back to leaders they trust in the community,” Rios said. “It needs to come from people they trust . . . going it alone doesn’t help anybody. We need to empower business owners. That’s why I always say ‘we’ when I’m talking to business owners. We can do this together.”
Diversity can help businesses as a whole. Magic Valley business owners said that different groups bring new ideas that others might not have thought of.
“It’s what they teach you in (business) school, isn’t it?” Mendoza said. “If you have a diverse workforce it’s better for the company as a whole. You can get different perspectives if you have people who are young and old. It’s the same chemistry we can work with whether people are Hispanic, young, old, white, black. Someone can have a different point of view other demographics haven’t seen.”
With continued growth in south-central Idaho, it becomes more and more important to have all voices represented, Castañeda said.
The South Central Idaho Hispanic Chamber’s primary goal as it begins its path as an independent entity is to grow membership and eventually plant seed organizations that will follow its path and eventually break away.
But all that requires changing attitudes, something that only comes with patience and effort, Castañeda said.
“It’s like trying to move a mountain one rock at a time.”
Megan Taros is a Times-News reporter and Report for America corps member covering the Magic Valley’s Hispanic community and Jerome County. You can support her work by donating to Report for America at http://bit.ly/supportRFA.
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