While it may not be a household name in the Sea to Sky, Community Futures Howe Sound has played an integral part in growing small businesses in the area for more than 30 years.
Community Futures (CF) is a nationwide, federally-funded non-profit set up in the ’80s with the goal of delivering financial and business development support to rural communities across the country.
“So it’s a pretty broad mandate of community economic development in rural areas. And however we want to go about that, whatever we see as the need, we can kind of pursue that,” said general manager of CF Howe Sound Kieran Hale.
“The kind of bread and butter is small business advice, small business coaching, and then small business lending.”
How it works, according to Hale, is an entrepreneur will present the team at CF Howe Sound with their business idea, and the team will provide them with free, no-barrier advice on the steps that need to be taken to first sort out their business plan.
From there, if the plan the prospective business owner comes back with is solid, CF Howe Sound will then work with them to get the business started, including providing start-up loans when needed.
“We usually step in when traditional financing isn’t available, and that can be for a number of reasons. So for instance, a start-up entrepreneur usually can’t get banking finance, a business looking for working capital financing, that’s not possible from traditional banks. Maybe the individual has a bad credit history, and even though the business plan is absolutely sound, because of that bad credit history, they can’t get access to traditional financing,” said Hale.
“And we can kind of step in there and provide lending if the situation is right, because we kind of use a bit more variety in our lending criteria. So we don’t just look at your credit score, we’ll try and look at … do we think that this entrepreneur has a great idea and they’re capable of completing it and making the business work? If that’s a ‘yes,’ then we can use it to finance that entrepreneur.”
And while there is a certain amount of risk that comes with funding businesses that can’t get traditional funding, Hale said the default rates on the loans they give out are actually very low, as they only provide funding to businesses they believe are ready to take that next step, and just need a stepping stone to get there.
Oftentimes, as was the case for the Squamish Water Kefir Company, funding from CF Howe Sound is the only option available to get a business off the ground.
Just over six years ago, Sabrina Horlyck started making water kefir—a fermented beverage with probiotics and digestive enzymes, similar to kombucha—to sell at the farmers’ market. As the popularity of her drinks started to take off, she began thinking about turning it into a real business but didn’t know where to start.
“[Community Futures] basically just sat down and kind of walked us through what we were going to do … like, ‘Do you know how to do a forecast? Do you know how to do a budget? How can we help you? Maybe we know people that can help you.’ So that was really good because we just started off with a hope and a prayer,” said Horlyck.
“It was one of our only options. It was either that or you’re going to need to be somebody who has family or friends that are willing to invest. So without Community Futures, I’m not really sure what we would have done, to be honest. We would have had to kind of do some crowdfunding or something like that, but this was just such an easy process.”
In addition to Squamish Water Kefir, CF Howe Sound has also helped many other local businesses in Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton get their start, including Mount Currie Coffee Co. and Velvet Underground, to name a few, and has the capacity to provide support for multiple businesses at once even if it’s just initial resources and preliminary steps needed before a full sit-down meeting can be scheduled, according to Hale.
“But we’ll always have time to introduce ourselves, have a conversation and offer some advice,” he said.
Read more at cfhowesound.com.
