Dubroff: Small Business Week highlights why resilience matters
With National Small Business Week just around the corner, I wanted to devote this column to the thousands of companies that are the bedrock of the region’s economy.
Small Business Week is the kickoff to a celebration of entrepreneurship that leads up to our 23rd annual Spirit of Small Business Awards celebration in August.
This year’s salute to small business takes place at a time when there is a disturbing trend – a tendency for governments at all levels to interfere with the operation of our free enterprise system. This is a test of resilience for companies and their owners, who got into business in the first place to have a free hand to chart their own course.
Consider the case of Meathead Movers, a company founded in San Luis Obispo that started out small and now bills itself as the largest moving company based in California. Meathead owner Aaron Steed spent years fending off and eventually settling federal charges that his company discriminated against women and older workers, even though not a single complaint had been filed.
Now he’s confronting the high cost of diesel fuel, thanks to the war in Iran, by refusing to join rental companies and some competitors and imposing a fuel surcharge. Diesel prices have risen around 50% in the past year, jumping from just under $5 per gallon to around $7.50.
Meathead is using technology and scale to run more efficiently; it is working with a dedicated provider to service its trucks off hours and blunt the impact of a stunning increase in prices. Price-sensitive customers are getting a bit of a break and Meathead said it’s growing revenue in line with its ambitious targets.
Meanwhile, in Northern Santa Barbara County, a group of independent vintners are pushing back against a wine industry tourism tax that was narrowly passed by the Board of Supervisors. The timing was terrible; this is the worst year for the industry in decades and there’s no sign of recovery in the near term.
At Flying Goat Cellars in Lompoc, Kate Griffith and her husband Norm Yost, along with Steve Pepe of Clos Pepe, and perhaps 50 others, are refusing to pay the 1% levy imposed by the supes and collected by the Santa Barbara Vintners Association.
The Pacific Legal Foundation is now representing Flying Goat and challenging the tax on constitutional grounds. As reported recently in this column, Pepe and his attorney, Matt Allen, forced the Vintners to open their Zoom meetings to the public.
Finally, there’s Haley Pavone. Her company, Pashion Footwear, was founded at Cal Poly and revolutionized the wedding and events business for women with a shoe that converts from high heels to flats.
She got a lot of help from Cal Poly’s ecosystem for entrepreneurs, scored $500,000 in startup capital and had the good sense to hire engineers to help with design details. She turned out to be a rock star on social media and rode fame on TikTok and Instagram to drive over $5 million in sales.
She recently returned to Cal Poly to talk about her past and her recent fight against the “Liberation Day” tariffs, which threatened her company. She spoke out, leveraged her communications skills, testified before Congress and helped drive awareness about her products and her cause.
With Pavone at the helm, Pashion Footwear is now a $10-million plus revenue company and she’s back on track.
At the Business Times, we’ve been proud to tell the story of all three of these companies and to follow their success – as well as their trials and challenges.
It used to be that you could open a restaurant or gym or retail store and pay your taxes and not worry about too much else. But I’ve become convinced that surviving in today’s economy requires far more skills at navigating government policies than it did a generation or two ago.
If you have a favorite small business story or if you want to tell your story, we’d love to hear it and host you at this year’s Spirit of Small Business awards. So please nominate by email to me or at pacbiztimes.com/nominations-spirit/.
And don’t forget to support your favorite independent company.
Henry Dubroff is the founder, owner and editor of the Pacific Coast Business Times. He can be reached at [email protected].
