Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
To start her business, Willetta DeYoung had to shell out about $400,000 to buy special equipment to print on textiles.
“It’s like an oversized inkjet printer” that uses dye rather than ink, she says, “but it’s huge. It’s 8 feet by 10 feet. It can print on fabrics up to 70 inches wide.” The printer is No. 15 of those sold in the United States, she says.
She can create custom fabrics for interior decorators, convert children’s drawings to fabric prints for individuals, and do production for local fashion designers.
Funded with her own savings, an SBA loan and financing from WomenVenture in St. Paul, the equipment is the heart of her year-old business, EDP Textiles in Minneapolis.
The equipment also puts substantial overhead costs on her books. With that in mind, Rollie Reis, a business consultant at WomenVenture, has counseled her to postpone hiring and otherwise do everything to keep fixed costs low.
For that advice, and counsel throughout the company’s first year, DeYoung calls Reis her lifeline.
“She cautioned me from making mistakes,” DeYoung says. For example, DeYoung was “on the verge” of hiring someone to help with sales, and figured she could manage the costs after she ran the numbers.
“I called Rollie, who said, ‘You don’t want to take on the commitment right now,’ ” DeYoung says. “She was right,” as she failed to hit her initial sales projections.
Reis says all business owners need to keep costs low. “They need to think about the lowest overhead way” of doing business. “Business is generally not stable the first year or two.”
Reis and her husband have owned for 15 years a wholesale gift manufacturing business, which her husband now runs.
“I learned through all the hard knocks. I really wanted to share the information,” she says, which is why she went to work at WomenVenture, a resource organization that helps people build businesses and careers.
“I kind of read their minds,” Reis says about the business owners she counsels. “But I don’t really read their minds, I’ve just been there, done that.”
DeYoung’s company is getting special interest from interior design students, whom she hosts in tours of the facility.
Last November DeYoung hit a milestone: “Last month was the first month I could pay myself,” she said in December. She didn’t expect it to take so long, “but again that’s where Rollie came in. She said, ‘I could have told you that.’ ”
Willetta DeYoung, EDP Textiles: 612.377.9100; wi******@*********es.com; www.edptextiles.comRollie Reis, WomenVenture: 651.251.0687; rr***@**********re.org
