The only thing that stood between Jennifer Esposito’s little Denver gelato company and the cold cases at 160 King Soopers stores was enough credit to cover the cost of ingredients.
It was a gap she couldn’t have bridged without Micro Business Development chief executive Kersten Hostetter.
“Kersten said ‘We’ll give you a line of credit to do that.’ It was huge for us,” Esposito says. “You can’t fund that kind of growth out of operating capital; you need a line of credit.”
Today, Espo’s Gelato employs 10 people, and the super premium gelatos are sold in King Soopers and Safeway, Whole Foods, Ralph’s in California, and Cub Foods in Minnesota. Next up: Sam’s Club.
It’s success stories like Esposito’s that led to Hostetter being named the 2008 Unique Woman of Colorado by the Women’s Foundation of Colorado, Lockheed Martin and The Denver Post.
The award, which includes a $1,000 prize to be donated to the charity of her choice, annually honors a woman whose work has left an indelible mark on her community and used her influence to create a more equitable society for Colorado’s women and girls.
“Though her work with women throughout Colorado, She is helping them achieve their dreams, by eliminating the barriers they encounter in reaching prosperity,” says Gretchen Gagel McComb, president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation.
Hostetter, 40, has helmed Denver- based MBD since 1999, and during that time the micro-credit lending organization has lent $9.2 million to 28,000 entrepreneurs — not all women — who created 3,200 jobs in businesses that likely would have had trouble finding conventional financing.
These are businesses like a doggie day care proposed before the concept was ubiquitous, an office window-blind cleaning company, Caribbean hot sauce maker looking to leave her home kitchen for something bigger, and a successful coffee shop owner who saw potential in her up-and-coming neighborhood to expand her cafe into a wine bar — even when conventional bankers didn’t.
MBD finances startups and established businesses with small loans, mentoring and help accessing markets.
In the process, Hostetter hopes to promote social change, building strength in the community by supporting people sidelined by the circumstances of their birth or skin color or education.
“I was raised with the idea that everybody deserves opportunity, for no other reason than they were born,” says Hostetter, the daughter of two public-school teachers who struggled to patch the family finances together with small summer businesses, such as peddling hand-painted wooden spoons at the Renaissance Fair in Larkspur and the People’s Fair in Denver.
“Not every business is going to be successful,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean every person isn’t.”
Dana Coffield: 303-954-1954 or dcoffield@denverpost.com
