A Place of Dreams : Eastside industrial park is home to many immigrant entrepreneurs who have built thriving businesses from grass-roots beginnings.
It began with a sewing machine, thread, glue and leather scraps in a musty two-door garage for Antonio and Yolanda Mascorro.
After moving to Monterey Park from Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1964, Mascorro earned money to make ends meet by making wallets with his wife in their garage.
He bought leather scraps at a tannery, cut the pieces with a rented machine, then stitched and glued them into tri-fold wallets. Together the couple produced about a dozen wallets a week and sold them to Olvera Street vendors and swap meets. That was 16 years ago.
Mascorro Leather now manufactures about 20,000 products a month and generates $4 million in annual sales from a 26,000-square-foot factory.
About 100 people work at Mascorro Leather, producing chain wallets, embroidered coin purses and woven belts to sell to companies wholesale. Their products with the Harley-Davidson logo are also popular with motorcyclists.
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Mascorro Leather represents one of numerous success stories at an Eastside industrial park operated by the East Los Angeles Community Union.
The 51-acre industrial park has become home to many immigrant entrepreneurs who have built thriving businesses from grass-roots beginnings.
These business owners said they established their companies at the park because of affordable lease space and a network of Latino businesses there.
Tenants are as diverse as an engineering society and security service and garment cutting companies, but most of them share a common thread--they are Latino-owned.
“It’s the business nerve center for Latino entrepreneurship,” said Joe Ortiz, spokesman for the Latin Business Assn. “It’s only natural that we would want to have our offices here.”
But not all of the businesses are Latino-oriented. Among the park’s 54 tenants are Aaron Bros., the art supply chain whose corporate headquarters is located there, and a Smart & Final store.
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The park was transformed from an old tire site when the B.F. Goodrich factory relocated in 1971, leaving an abandoned lot and hundreds of people jobless.
Today, 1,200 employees, most of whom live on the Eastside, work at the park, which is bounded by Olympic and Goodrich boulevards and Gerhart and Union Pacific avenues. Businesses at the park generate about $100 million in annual revenues.
“When looking for tenants, we consider two things,” said David Lizarraga, president of the East Los Angeles Community Union, the park operator. “That the business provides jobs to the local community, and that it provides retail services. They need to be partners with the city and create partners.”
In 1978, the 10 businesses established at the park generated $325,000 in annual rents. By 1984, the number of businesses had doubled and annual gross of rents had jumped to $2 million. In 1994, the 54 tenants generated $5 million in rents.
Los Angeles is the home to the nation’s largest number of Latino-owned businesses--75,000 of them--and has nurtured the entrepreneurial spirit. And for some, the industrial park has been the ideal place for new businesses to grow.
Businesses like Alvarez Enterprises reflect this.
Gildardo Alvarez moved his company from Jalisco, Mexico, to East Los Angeles four years ago. He imports charro and other Western wear from Mexico and sells them wholesale in 12 states.
Alvarez acquired his 2,500-square-foot lot in 1991. In 1994, he doubled the factory space and expanded his market in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Lizarraga said he believes many Latino businesses are able to survive because they look to the resources in their community.
“Latino businesses have been able to succeed because we know our community,” he said. “We have to understand our consumers, do more with less and deal with recession. That doesn’t mean we haven’t made mistakes.”
B & H cutting, a year-old garment-cutting company, is one of the newest businesses on the block.
Bernardo Gonzalez, a farmer from Michoacan, Mexico, established the factory on a 2,500-square-foot spot in the park with just enough money for two months’ rent, about $1,250 a month for a warehouse that size. The factory cuts fabric for about 3,000 garments a day for another park business. He has generated enough money to secure a three-year lease.
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It’s called the industrial park, but to many it is a park of dreams, according to Antonio Mascorro.
Back at Mascorro’s leather factory, the sounds of industry whirr in the air. Workers pull leather sheets through huge cutting machines. Elsewhere, factory hands pull material through noisy sewing machines. Latinas sing along to a blaring radio while packaging wallets in plastic bags.
“I like the sounds of cutting machines, sewing machines. . . . The sounds are soft to me,” Mascorro said while pressing the flaps of a leather wallet with his thumb. “I never dreamed the business would get this big.”
“It’s not easy to run a business,” he said. “I just work hard. I work and I am happy.”
