Forum Provides Venue for Companies, Investors to Connect

Bob Olszewski of Camarillo had no idea when he built a miniature doll house for his daughter more than 20 years ago that he was plotting a life course.

Soon after the last wall was installed on the house, Olszewski was busy creating figurines to fill the rooms. It wasn’t long before Hummel, Disney and private collectors discovered his inch-high bronze creations.

The rest is entrepreneurial history.

Olszewski now is four years removed from his position as a chief designer for Hummel collectibles owner W. Goebel and five years into his own Olszewski Studios figurine design firm. Those five years have been spent both maintaining his business and restructuring it in order to expand.

Now he needs a little boost, and he’s turning to about 150 investors for it.

Olszewski will be among nine presenters at the fourth annual Enterprise Development Center Forum next Tuesday at the North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village. The forum, sponsored by Cal Lutheran University and Southern California Edison, offers owners of small and medium-sized businesses an opportunity to share their company profiles and plans with potential financiers.

“I feel what we’ve done is loaded the cannon and a venture capitalist can light the fuse on it,” Olszewski said. “We had investors talk to us five years ago, but we didn’t want to do it at that time, until we defined the direction we were going to take. We now have a clearly defined path.”

That path includes branching out extensively into the low and medium end of the jewelry box and men’s gift markets, while maintaining the businesses’ high-end collectibles presence. Olszewski Studios also is preparing to move its 12 employees--most of whom work out of their homes--to a studio and gallery on the developing Cal State Channel Islands campus.

Other businesses on the forum schedule are SKP Solutions of Camarillo, EpiGenx Pharmaceuticals of Santa Barbara, RVM Scientific of Goleta, Santa Maria Airlines, AudioLibros del Mundo of Valencia, hyperDrive.com of Pasadena, Siren Sensor of Encino and Speechlaw of Mission Viejo.

“We’re bringing together business owners who are in need of funding, not only with investors but with the network of people that comes with the university,” said forum director Mike Miller, an adjunct professor at Cal Lutheran and owner of the Educational Consulting Group, a management consulting firm in Glendale.

“We can help with business planning, legal issues, marketing, standard business issues--we plug them into the network,” he said. “We find that a lot of small-business owners have the business idea, but they don’t know how to run the operation.”

Peter Jones, president of SKP Solutions, said his online data service company could use investor capital to increase its marketing power and ultimately branch out.

The three-person operation, founded in June, provides online data backup service to business customers. By year’s end, Jones plans to add online systems management and sales services.

“I’m looking to get funding to help market and promote,” Jones said. “It’s very important to get out to the business community and let them know what’s out there for them.

“The forum is a perfect vehicle for me to get out in front of a lot of people in one place, hopefully to spark interest.”