By Michelle Wulfson
The Huntsville Item, Texas
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) While it has been a tremendously difficult year for many small businesses, there are entrepreneurs who have embraced this uncertain period to launch their ventures.
Huntsville
COVID-19 has certainly seen a rise of small business closures across the nation, however, Walker County entrepreneurs have approached the pandemic as an opportunity to strike out on their own, whether it be out of necessity or perseverance.
In a September Yelp Economic Average Report, 163,735 businesses nationwide have closed as of August 31 — 60% of those have closed permanently.
“The pandemic has certainly provided a lot of challenges for our country, but it’s also provided opportunities,” Huntsville — Walker County president and CEO Ray Hernandez said.
Locally, September was a record month for the Huntsville — Walker County Chamber of Commerce, seeing the highest increase of chamber membership in one month than any month since at least August 2019. Nearly 60% were new businesses to the community.
Similarly, the Small Business Development Center has also experienced a record 12 months and has assisted 28 new businesses start up in the community.
“For some, they no longer are working for a company or a business, and this is a good time for them to start a business they may have been thinking about for a long time … but a lot of them were just working towards going into business for themselves and continued to do so despite the pandemic,” said Rhonda Ellisor, the director for the localSmall Business Development Center. “The personality of a lot of entrepreneurs is that spirit of doing whatever it takes, and I think that’s the case in some of these, they were determined to do it, and if it was feasible, why not move forward?”
New downtown business owner Peyton Shelton was a student at Sam Houston State University and had been working at Buffalo Wild Wings while planning Square One Nutrition. Shelton saw a need for a local business offering a welcoming nutritional based environment and felt that the pandemic presented the right opportunity to provide a healthier option to students stranded at home who might otherwise seek out fast food options.
“I grew up watching people be entrepreneurs, my mom had opened her own businesses in the past and my dad used to own his own business, so I just grew up with the mindset that that’s what I wanted to do. I always knew that I wanted to be my own boss one of these days,” Shelton said. “The opportunity came and I just decided to go for it.”
It’s a risk that has paid off for her and a wave of new businesses in Walker County.
“I think that we have a good business climate, we have resources and partners like the chamber and Small Business Development Center working together to support the small business community,” Hernandez said.
The chamber has initiated services through the pandemic to better support its members including a COVID-19 resource landing page on its website.
They have also participated in Open for Business economic development calls with congressmen, members of the university, the city of Huntsville and the small business administration’s director, deputy director and chief coordinator. Additionally, the chamber has made a commitment through at least the end of the year to make their committee meetings accessible online for all members.
For Shelton, it’s the support of the network marketing provided by the chamber that drew her to joining recently.
“We just felt like that was a great opportunity for us to be apart of, we want people to call the chamber and ask, ‘hey, where can I get a nutritional drink?'” Shelton said.
The SBDC has also welcomed an influx of businesses throughout the pandemic that were looking for support, however, Ellisor feels that they could be helping more.
“Our biggest challenge is getting the word out that we have these services available,” Ellisor said.
The SBDC is part of the University of Houston Texas Gulf Coast SBDC Network hosted by Sam Houston State University College of Business. With partial funding from the United States Small Business Administration, the SBDC and its team of industry experts is able to help entrepreneurs for free, primarily with the beginning stages of startup. However, they do offer resources to established businesses as well, especially through the pandemic.
In lieu of in-person training events, the SBDC is providing on-demand webinars 24/7 for everything including starting businesses, managing a business, marketing, money and finance procurement. The SBDC has also worked with businesses to address concerns of how to adapt to changes brought on by the pandemic, especially within the restaurant industry and general business marketing.
“There have been some businesses that really struggled where it wasn’t as simple for them to pivot and adjust,” Ellisor said. “The majority of what we’ve seen in Huntsville has been amazing. The resilience and the determination has been very admirable because entrepreneurs, they have a lot at risk — their livelihood, their life savings — and so many of them that we saw were willing to do whatever it took to adjust to the new situation.”
“We are not out of this by any shape at all, there are businesses that still need help, there are businesses that have not been able to fully open,” Hernandez added. “Our community has lost millions and millions of dollars from our economic base, and that’s across the wide spectrum.”
However, according to Hernandez and Ellisor, the business owners seem optimistic about their future in Huntsville.
“We’re feeling really confident, and everything seems to keep growing so, as long as we’re growing, we really can’t complain,” Shelton noted.
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Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
