Found and Fixed awarded $300,000 investment from Seed Commons and Coop Hudson Valley
From left to right stand Justine Porter, Angela (Co-op Hudson Valley), and Gabriel Jasmin (Found and Fixed Hudson Valley co-owners) at the entry-way of their soon-to-be-opened retail space located at 10 Commercial Avenue, Highland, NY.
Picture this - You think up an idea to start a super fun business. A good friend of 20 years joins on as a business partner and then a few months later you incorporate as a cooperative and recruit a handful of others. And then a very cool non-profit organization writes you a check to make all your business dreams come true.
That’s essentially what’s happened to us! I am so excited to announce that Found & Fixed Hudson Valley has been awarded a $300,000 investment from Coop Hudson Valley and Seed Commons.
What this financial gain means
In the world of business finance, $300k is nothing, but to our very small business, it’s everything. This funding means that we get to do all of the things that we’ve imagined doing as a business. It also means that an outside party is holding us accountable (and coaching us) to hit our goals. The personal debt that we took on to start the business is now (thankfully) paid off. We can consistently pay ourselves and put time into growing our business. This funding means that we can experiment more to learn what does and does not work for us.
Over the past year and a half, we moved from the basement into a small (and janky) workshop and then again into a beautiful space with three garage bays and windows that look onto the rail trail. We’ve grown from one to two to six – and we’re currently hiring (Applications open through May 19)!
With these new team members came expertise in making, repair, marketing, operations, teamwork, heart, and all the other things that a small business needs to grow. We decided to incorporate as a worker cooperative and are doing the work to figure out what that means for us as a group and how we operate.
The last piece of the puzzle…
The last big piece of the puzzle for us was financing. Getting a business off the ground is expensive.
On average, small businesses take 2 to 3 years to be able to turn a profit and pay founders AND on top of that new businesses require lots of things. This means that when you start a business, you’re investing your savings, going into debt, and not paying yourself. It’s an incredibly challenging spot to be in and many new businesses shut down not because they concept or business wasn’t good, but because the founder can’t manage those dynamics for so long.
Independently wealthy we are not, and so to get this business off the ground, we needed help. Not going to lie, the idea of taking out a personal business loan and putting my personal assets as a co-founder on the line is terrifying.
A moment of gratitude
I am so grateful to have connected with Coop Hudson Valley. This organization provides training and support and non-extractive financing options to cooperatives in our region. But this money isn’t free. It was a long and laborious process. We went through several months of rigorous evaluations. this included building very detailed 8 year financial projections on how we’ll grow our business and doing detailed research into each line item. We evaluated many possible revenue streams and weighed different options for staffing up to grow the business. We weighed, we tallied, presented, iterated, presented again, and after 6 long months, we are finally approved and have access to the funds. And damn, it feels… nice. 🥲
Making decisions democratically
As a coop, we wanted everyone to have a say in how our funding would be used and we ran a participatory budgeting process internally. We have several internal committees (which we call circles).
Each circle leader crafted their own budget for their work. We have 20 different touch-points of input, including two in-person facilitated, several zoom meetings, lots of surveys, and many, many one-on-one input sessions to figure out what funding we needed and why. Operating from a place of collaborative process and decision -making is one of the spokes in a worker co-operative.
What’s next
Here we are today. Over the next year and a half, we’ll slowly receive the funds. There are milestones that we’ll have to meet in order get new disbursements. For example, we have to open our showroom this summer and hit certain production and sales goals to get our next disbursement of funds. Stay tuned and join our mailing list, where you’ll receive first access to this news and our GRAND OPENING EVENT!
Receiving this funding does not mean that our business is guaranteed to succeed and survive. Now more than ever, we ask that you support us! The best ways to do that are to buy from our shop and to send friends our way.
~ Justine Porter
Co-founder, Found & Fixed Hudson Valley
