Latino Firms Push New Group : Hispanic Business Organization Slates 20-Year Plan
When Sergio Banuelos surveys his supermarkets, fast-food restaurants and import-export firm, he remembers how tough it was in the mid-1970s when he was looking for financing for some auto repair shops that he then owned.
“I went through a suffering process,” Banuelos said. “I went to bank after bank and they said I wasn’t qualified” for a loan.
The Latino businessman had no central organization to turn to for information about business planning and financing, or on how small firms can do business with large corporations and the state and federal government, he said.
Banuelos now is president of the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, a Sacramento-based coalition of local Latino business groups that is taking the lead in helping to promote the state’s Latino-owned businesses. The 4,800-member trade organization will stage its fourth statewide convention in Stockton this weekend and will unveil its newly formed 20-year plan to boost membership and create opportunities for Latino firms.
“We’re trying to be the voice of the Hispanic business community,” Banuelos said.
Banuelos wishes the group had existed when he entered business “because it was really up and down. I was like a yo-yo.”
Banuelos said he knew little about planning and financing the growth of his business or even making yearly business plans and financial projections.
“Hispanics do business by gut feeling,” Banuelos said. “We don’t do business by projections.
“Nine out of 10 (business) failures are because of lack of preparation, lack of projections and lack of financing--those are the things that are hurting the Hispanic business community,” he said.
But Banuelos learned those difficult business lessons over several years. “It was a nightmare,” he said.
In 1978, Banuelos abandoned the auto repair shops and joined his brother Manuel and nephew Mario in the supermarket business.
The Banuelos family built the one existing Mercado Cali-Mex in San Ysidro, which was largely a wholesale operation, into a chain of five retail supermarkets. In addition, two more Mercados Cali-Mex will open in 1986.
On his own, Banuelos has expanded into Mexican fast-food outlets and into the food import-export arena. “Now things have changed,” Banuelos said. “We say to ourselves: ‘In order to tap into the economic world, such as banks, we have to present ourselves professionally.’
“The Hispanic represents a very big chunk of the economic growth of California,” Banuelos said. “We do have the economic power.”
It was to harness the economic power of Latinos that the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce was formed in September, 1984, on the foundation of a previous group called the California Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce.
Like the California Hispanic Chambers, the earlier organization was composed of local Latino business groups that emulated the powerful chambers of commerce in Mexico, said Larry Lopez, executive vice president of the California Hispanic Chambers. However, the California Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce, which was formed in 1979, was primarily a social group that staged activities aimed at keeping the Latin culture alive in the United States, he said.
“We were excellent at giving parties and giving awards dinners, but we did very little in helping business and disseminating information and giving conferences and doing that nuts-and-bolts type of work that a trade association is supposed to do,” he said.
After some prodding by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which is based in Kansas City, the California group changed its focus. With funding from the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency, the California Hispanic Chambers during the last year has organized four procurement and management development conferences, has taken positions on several pieces of legislation and has testified before state and government agencies on various issues, Lopez said.
The California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce is made up of 25 local Latino business organizations--including, in Los Angeles, the Latin Business Assn. and the Mexican Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles County--with total membership of 4,800 businesses.
That is only a small piece of the total number of Latino-owned businesses in California, which boasts the country’s largest Latino business community. California was home to nearly 18% of the nation’s 219,355 Latino-owned companies in 1977, the most recent statistics available from the Census Bureau.
“We have determined that we (Latinos) are a force and have to take charge of our own destiny,” Lopez said.
20-Year Plan
To chart the course of that destiny, representatives of the California Hispanic Chambers recently met in Washington to create a 20-year plan for the association and for the state’s Latino-owned businesses. The plan was developed with the aid of the Acacia Group of financial services companies, which donated employee time and company facilities.
The plan outlines a complex set of stategies for financing, networking and business development. The program also calls for the California Hispanic Chambers to strengthen its legislative advocacy programs, to polish the Latino corporate image, to improve educational programs and member services and to promote international trade, particularly with Pacific Rim countries.
The group intends to become economically self-sufficient in three years, relying on membership dues and corporate funding for special projects rather than depending on the Minority Business Development Agency, Lopez said.
Latinos “will have an influential and positive effect on the economic growth of California,” Lopez said. The California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce “needed to see ourselves as taking a leadership role to help our community assume its role.”
