Colorado bankers and lenders Wednesday unveiled a consortium effort aimed at helping small businesses navigate their way to critical funding sources by way of a newly created website.
Claiming it to be the first time nationally that private and public agencies have worked together to help small businesses obtain financing, Colorado Bankers Association chief executive Don Childears said was the brainchild of happenstance.
“It was at our board meeting in November that someone brought it up,” Childears said following the announcement at the Capital. “I suppose we merely presumed people knew how to do this, that they understood how to get financing for their business.”
The approach is unique in that it doesn’t set aside a pool of money designated for small business lending — as typically occurs to spur growth — but pools resources to help those companies find funding that already exists.
The website brings together about a dozen organizations — the Mile High Community Loan Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank in Denver among them — whose objective is to hold the hand of small businessmen seeking much-needed loans to not only grow their operation, but to fuel job growth and hiring.
Gov. John Hickenlooper relayed his experience as a small business owner — when he started up the Wynkoop Brewery in the forgotten section of Lower Downtown — and the difficulty he and his partners had in acquiring financing. Help in cutting the process short would have beem appreciated, he said.
“We got turned down by 33 banks when we started the brewery,” Hickenlooper said. “And it took a lot of time just to get turned down.”
is intended to point business owners to the right funding sources, places where they’re likely to succeed in acquiring loans rather than meet long periods of endless red tape, only to learn they’re in the wrong place.
“I wish I had this website when I started,” said Brandi Paik, 29, co-founder of CandyGrind, a Denver-based sports apparel company that started in a basement and now ships to Asia and New Zealand.
Trained in fashion design, not business, Paik said that although she met several sympathetic and helpful lenders that helped grow her company, it came at the price of time and confusion.
The website includes a matrix of lenders and flowchart of the lending process to help business owners determine their best course.
David Migoya: 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com
