Before Adriana Victoria heard of Cultura Business Communications, her shimmering gelatin desserts were more a labor of love than a moneymaker.
But six months ago, the Mexican immigrant went to a Cultura training session to find out how she could turn her kitchen skills into a business.
Today, Victoria, 29, is running a fledgling dessert business called Gelatin Bouquets. She sells colorful, and edible, creations to restaurants, caterers and private parties.
Cultura helped with everything “from finding a good name to how to do my marketing, my promotion and how to register my trade name, how to do a customer survey to find out if people like the flavors and texture,” Victoria said.
Agnes Talamantez Carroll, 57, started Cultura four years ago to provide training on cultural sensitivity for corporations. But Carroll and her partners, Cheryl Lucero and Joyce Iriarte, quickly decided they could fill another niche as well.
They shifted their focus to helping entrepreneurs, most of them Hispanic and many of them immigrants, start or expand small businesses.
All seven members of the staff are bilingual, and each specializes in subjects important to a successful business. They provide training in bookkeeping, marketing and other subjects, assist with business plans and help clients determine target markets for their products.
Some of Cultura’s clients are interested in trading across the border. Victoria, for example, buys some gelatin flavors such as mango and guava from Mexico.
Between January and May, Cultura trained 700 people, 85 percent of whom are primarily Spanish-speakers. Carroll estimates that about 65 percent of those who come to Cultura use the knowledge to start or expand a business.
Not everyone who walks into Cultura’s office on West Colfax Avenue, or who attends the company’s classes at the Aurora Business Development Center and elsewhere, is ready to launch a business.
“Some think they can have any business, so we start poking holes,” Carroll said recently.
She described the type of conversation she has had with some clients: “You want to have a cleaning service? Can you speak English? Who is your customer going to be?
“‘Well, I am going to Castle Rock,”‘ she said, parroting a client. Her response: “When you knock on those doors, do you think they are going to speak Spanish?”
Some leave knowing that they have work to do before they can start a business.
Cultura relies on funding from banks and government agencies and charges little or no fee to clients, most of whom are struggling to make ends meet. But it isn’t a traditional nonprofit.
Organized as a limited-liability company, Cultura has contracts with Key Bank, U.S. Bank, the state of Colorado and others. Each of the contracts calls for the company to train a certain number of people in business basics.
Financial institutions have an incentive to pay for training.
When Cultura clients apply for business loans, they are referred to banks that fund Cultura, but they’re not obligated to use those banks.
More than one in five residents of metro Denver were Hispanic in 2004, making the region attractive to companies hoping to get their business.
Many of them arrived from Mexico with a deep distrust of banks, said Debbie Trujillo, Hispanic program manager for Key Bank in Colorado.
Key Bank’s relationship with Cultura has helped the bank enlist new customers, she said.
“We believe that if you have one client who is very happy with you in the Hispanic community, he will tell another friend,” Trujillo said. “We build one business at a time, and that business owner tells others.”
Cultura doesn’t check the immigration status of its clients, said Carroll. But for them to set up a legitimate business, they need a tax ID from the government, a document that is difficult to fake.
“And Social Security numbers, while they aren’t hard to duplicate, they are found out at tax time,” Carroll said.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
