Start-Up Firm May Have to Shut : Finances: Unable to find a lender, Rising Star Contract Services turns to a coalition of local leaders for help.

Shepard Bentley’s worst fear is that he will have to close his 25-person manufacturing plant before it ships its first product. The cause of its imminent demise? Lack of financing.

Bentley’s start-up company, Rising Star Contract Services Inc., rose from the ashes of a layoff. Bentley and 400 other people lost their jobs earlier this year when Symbol Technologies began relocating its Costa Mesa high-tech plant to New York. Symbol, which makes bar code scanners and portable data entry computers, reaped tax breaks and $9.6 million in cash incentives.

“We’re trying to put some of the unemployed people of Symbol back to work in Orange County,” Bentley said. “There is a trend for this kind of work to go to East Asia and Mexico or somewhere else.”

Bentley will not give up without a fight. In his pursuit of funding, he persuaded Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder to tour Rising Star on Wednesday and listen to his troubles.

“We have to address the problems that are allegedly forcing companies to leave the county in droves,” Wieder said during the unusual meeting between county and company officials. “On the local level, there is an emerging awakening of policy-makers to the concerns of the bottom line.”

Bentley and Shawn Lloyd, chairman of Rising Star, need to raise $1 million to lease equipment. Then they can start assembling printed circuit boards on a subcontract basis for other high-tech firms.

They already have about $100,000 in private funding and a $150,000 bank loan guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. An insurer granted them a discount on a policy, and a supplier gave credit.

They also have letters of intent for $4 million in orders. Customers like the idea of a business that makes small batches of a product and concentrates on quality rather than low prices and high volumes, said Bentley, a 10-year veteran in the industry. But banks and other lenders typically won’t deal with such a venture until it has a track record.

Almost all of Rising Star’s 25 employees worked together for years in a similar business as a division of Symbol, but that doesn’t matter much, said Tim Cooley, president of Partnership 2010.

“They’ve got a chicken and egg problem: no money to finance an expansion even though they have a strong backlog,” Cooley said of Rising Star.

Partnership 2010 is a coalition of business, government and education leaders who want to develop a strategic plan for economic growth in Orange County. Wieder is vice chairwoman of the group.

Not even Symbol, which held talks with Bentley from February to June, will invest in Rising Star, which is only two blocks away. Instead of leasing its equipment to Rising Star, Symbol is selling its machines at auction.

Bentley said his company’s orders are at risk as time slips by, and the start-up money won’t last forever.

Lloyd said the company might have to consider moving elsewhere if it can get incentives.

For now, Rising Star’s 6,000-square-foot plant is half empty. Workers are filling orders manually. Three automated machines stand unused because other equipment for the assembly line is missing.

Wieder and Partnership 2010 officials offered to act as a broker for Rising Star, putting it in touch with venture capitalists and other sources of funding.

Bentley, though grateful, says he isn’t expecting much.

“There are resources in Orange County that we’re not aware of, and that’s why we sent letters asking for help,” Bentley said. “We’re trying to dispel this mentality that the last person leaving Orange County should turn out the lights.”

Of all the politicians that he contacted, Bentley said, only Wieder showed interest. Before Symbol made its decision to move, no government effort was made to keep it in Orange County.

Said Cooley: “We’re at least doing brainstorming if nothing else.”