Entrepreneur Tressa Basler-White found herself at a crossroads in her professional life. After formulating a Paleo-friendly protein powder, Basler-White kept hitting road blocks on the path to officially launching her product – and then her personal world was shaken to the core when her best friend was diagnosed with a rare auto immune disease called CIDP. With her friend no longer able to eat bread, one of her favorite foods, Basler-White set out to create something that would meet her ailing friend’s new dietary needs. And so, Eco-Paleo Bread was born.
While Basler-White had a storefront and a place to bake, there were numerous other hurdles she had to clear before she could officially launch her business. That’s what brought her to the Small Business Development Center (SBDC). As she puts it, “I spent two months going in circles, not sure which direction to take, and then I reached out to the SBDC in May – I was just online Googling, walking around blindly, and that’s what brought me to their site.”
Basler-White attended a seminar about beginning a small business, which is where she learned of the SBDC’s one-on-one consultation program. From there, she met with two consultants from the Orange County SBDC location in Santa Ana Traci Cole, who helped Basler-White create a list of what she needed to work on and two weeks later, with John Guth to help her with her accounting.
“Then I went to the Ontario SBDC location and took a seminar –Facebook for Business,” Basler-White recalls. “And that was awesome because I met a whole slew of other people who helped me…through that seminar I met Michael Alpert, who really stepped up and helped me solve my website issues so I could launch within a few weeks of us meeting.”
Michael Alpert, a business consultant at the Inland Empire SBDC and digital media guru says, “the key to longevity is online. Launching an online store can help you reach a wider audience – and breathe more life into your new business. It’s another sales avenue and another way for people who are interested in your product to get to your product. Especially for specialized things like Paleo Bread, you want your product to be widely available.” Michael helped Basler-White accomplish the seemingly impossible in record time. “We did so much –within a month we created a website that could sell product and take payments. And she’s so comfortable with editing her own website now.”
Basler-White successfully launched Eco-Eco- Bread on Saturday, June 23rd with an event at The Green Store in Hermosa Beach, where she spent three hours educating customers on her product and sold 14 loaves of bread. The store itself bought 10 loaves at wholesale and sold out, then immediately placed an order for more. And while she’s been fielding requests from other retail outlets for more products, Basler-White is slowly expanding and managing the hurdles that coincide with being a new business owner.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done without the SBDC I’m very thankful there’s a platform like this for people like me to use,” she says. “At the end of the day, the state of California wants to have successful businesses, which means it’s in their best interest for small business owners to succeed. And the SBDC will do what they can to make us successful. Small businesses need that nurturing, and our success is the SBDC’s success.”
You can find Eco-Paleo Bread at The Green Store in Hermosa Beach or order it online direct from their website. For additional information, please visit http://www.eco-paleo.com/.
The Orange County Inland Empire Small Business Development Center Network (OCIE SBDC) offers no cost business consulting and low-cost training to current business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs throughout Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Our team of consultants is ready to assist in a variety of areas like: start up assistance, debt and equity funding, attracting and retaining customers, international trade and technology commercialization. For additional information contact us at 1 (800) 616-SBDC (7232) or http://www.ociesmallbusiness.org.
The OCIE SBDC Network is hosted by California State University, Fullerton and funded in part through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, conclusions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA. All programs are extended to the public on a nondiscriminatory basis.
Source: Orange County Inland Empire Small Business Development Center Network (OCIE SBDC)
