Businesswomen of Color Showing Increasing Clout

Businesses owned by women of color are quickly spreading. Growing three times faster than any other sector in small business, their firms employ 1.7 million people and generate $184 billion in sales. And more of these firms are located in Los Angeles and Orange County--146,000 or about 14% overall--than anywhere else in the country, according to the National Foundation for Women Business Owners.

Recognizing the collective impact of more than 8 million women-owned firms, the U.S. Small Business Administration has launched a Web site designed to help female entrepreneurs start or expand their businesses. The SBA’s Online Women’s Business Center (www.sba.gov/womeninbusiness) is a free training site found on the World Wide Web. With a click of a mouse, businesswomen can find advice on networking, management techniques, market research, technology training and other topics. So far, the Web site has registered more than 210,000 hits.

The biggest hurdle female business owners have is being taken seriously, the foundation’s survey shows. Profiling women-owned firms in a growing number of Web sites, magazines and business journals will lessen this concern, said Bruce Rosenthal, the foundation’s spokesman.

Industries with the greatest growth in the number of firms owned by women of color in the past decade have been motion pictures, construction, manufacturing, air transportation and wholesaling.

But this burgeoning segment has not gone unnoticed by lenders. Wells Fargo found the niche so profitable that it created a $10-billion, 10-year loan program for established women-owned businesses in 1996.

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Daryl Strickland covers tourism and small and minority business issues for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5670, and at daryl.strickland@latimes.com