Wally Akinkuowo and the business he and his wife, Joyce, operate have graduated from the basement of their Atwells Avenue home. The business is Legacy Cleaning Services Limited. It has grown by at least 40 percent in the last six months. They have more clients – and more respect — since becoming a part of Urban Ventures, a state-funded business incubator.
Urban Ventures has found a home within 8,000-square-feet of space in a red brick building on Colfax Street in South Providence. The offices there are spacious – and carpeted. There is a conference room for meetings and presentations and computers aplenty.
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It is a long way from Akinkuowo’s basement.
“People would open the Yellow Pages and then go to my address,” he said. “And they would see a house. Now, they come here. We use the conference room. Business is good.”
Akinkuowo is carrying himself with renewed confidence. He represents just what the state was looking for when it invested in the Urban Ventures concept. His is a small business – with big potential. But he needed that boost – that helping hand.
Legacy Cleaning performs a range of cleaning services, including carpet cleaning, water-damage, and odor control, fire restoration – even crime scenes. Now that the Akinkuowos have moved it out of their basement it is growing rapidly.
Justin Aina, executive director of Urban Ventures, said one of the first things he did with Legacy Cleaning was to set up a modern disc-recorded accounting system. Prior to that, the business’s records were kept on paper.
That’s the whole idea of Urban Ventures: to assist minority and low or moderate-income entrepreneurs in getting businesses off the ground. In an incubator, for example, secretarial services are shared. Perhaps, most importantly, ideas are exchanged.
Aina suggests that Legacy Cleaning’s business may exceed last year’s sales by 90 percent.
Wally Akinkuowo smiles at such a thought. It is a knowing smile. Akinkuowo has experienced what he can do with proper resources. He is determined to grow – to take his business to a higher level.
There are plaques on the wall above his desk, detailing the various training certificates he and his employees have earned. He shows them off to a visitor – and remembers that they were not hanging in his basement.
Urban Ventures is indeed proving to be an unparalleled success.
The idea was that it would serve as a pilot program. That eventually, it would be replicated in other urban areas throughout Rhode Island. It seems to be well on its way to becoming that model, according to Keith A. Oliveira, president of the Urban Ventures Board of Directors.
“It has gone very much as we had hoped,” said Oliveira. “The two purposes of Urban Ventures have been to identify entrepreneurs from within the community and the development of businesses that are part of the growth economy – high tech businesses. Some of our tenants are really on the cutting edge of information technology.”
Legacy Cleaning is joined by First Venture Partners, Maxie Graphics, USB Group, 1ClickAsia.com and CETWAG.
First Venture Partners is the anchor tenant, a consulting and marketing company that serves as a resource to all of the Urban Venture tenants. Mark Roberts runs it.
CETWAG, a computer repair and consulting business owned and operated by Robert and Valerie Douglass, is on a roll of its own. The company was recently honored by the U.S. Small Business Administration and has seen its sales grow by an average of 89 percent in each of the past two years.
Incorporated in August 1996, CETWAG moved from Middletown to join the Urban Ventures program. The company has several state contracts, including all three campuses of the Community College of Rhode Island.
”We’ve done well at the state level. Now we want to go to the federal level,” said Robert Douglass, a native of Alabama.
Douglass has an engaging personality. He describes his business with confidence, quick to share credit with Valerie. Urban Ventures has provided CETWAG with some important resources. With a carpeted conference room as a backdrop, notes Oliveira, Douglass and others have been able to make some impressive – and profitable — presentations.
“If you are in front of a banker,” Oliveira said. “We have the stamp of the state, of the Economic Development Corporation. We have sources to bring to the table. There is more of a comfort level here.”
At Maxie Graphics, Sharon Maxie also has graduated from a business once confined by the walls of her home. The move to Urban Ventures, she said, has been a good one. She too mentions the surroundings – especially the conference room — as adding greatly to her ability to make a professional presentation.
The whole experience has Maxie thinking big.
”We know where we want to go with this business,” she said. “We eventually want to hire more people – give people a chance.”
USB Group is a software development company started by natives of Brazil, who arrived in Rhode Island just months ago. The company is already looking to hire more people.
1ClickAsia.com provides Internet broadcasting to the Asian-American community. The company is a division of United Minority Web Broadcasting and is headed by Christopher Than, its president and chief executive officer.
Aina has been a good find for Urban Ventures. Oliveira acknowledges that the program was slow out of the gate when it started at the beginning of last summer. But when Aina came on board toward the end of the year, it immediately picked up speed. The charge from Oliveira and the organization’s board was simple – get tenants for Urban Ventures.
A business development expert, who had worked with the Coalition for Minority Investment, Aina went straight to his Rolodex. He called friends. He called contacts. And just as Oliveira and Aina had suspected all along – the entrepreneurs and their dreams were waiting for just this kind of opportunity.
”I suspected that there were businesses out there that would use this center,” said Oliveira. “But I’m even more encouraged by the number of high technology companies that came forward.”
Business incubators received the blessing of the General Assembly through legislation passed in 1998, which was part of a three-bill urban revitalization plan. The Providence office of the U.S. Small Business Administration helped to work on the legislation.
Oliveira sees Urban Ventures as representing a piece of what is possible in the urban community. It is not alone. Oliveira points to the Urban Business Development Network. He expects all Urban Ventures tenants to be a part of that.
UBDN is a collaborative of various business development initiatives serving the urban community.
With six companies and nearly 20 employees under its roof, Urban Ventures is indeed well on its way. Space is already being cleared so that USB Group can expand operations. In fact all of the companies are talking about moving forward – and getting bigger.
Oliveira thinks of Wally and Joyce Akinkuowo and smiles. That talk of determined entrepreneurs graduating from a basement operation. He thinks of Sharon Maxie and her determination to someday provide opportunities for others.
In the halls of Urban Ventures, there is a tangible sense of pride. For Oliveira, it is a sense of what has been – and will be – accomplished.
”The best is yet to come,” said Oliveira. “We are very much in our infancy stage.”
