Business in America News

An American Renaissance in Manufacturing Happening In Kansas City and Columbia, Missouri

Ed note: this post was originally published on The Commerce Blog, the official blog of the U.S. Department of Commerce

I am back in my home state of Missouri today, so it is even more of a treat to witness firsthand the resurgence in American manufacturing.  I visited two manufacturers today – the A. ZAHNER Company, in Kansas City, and Environmental Dynamics International (EDI), in Columbia – and had the chance to talk to some remarkable  local businesses leaders and entrepreneurs in both cities.

Under President Obama’s leadership, and with the hard work of businesses and workers like those here in Missouri, our private sector has now seen 28 straight months of job growth – 4.4 million jobs. Of course, there is more work to be done, but we are making progress in critical areas. Over the last two and a half years, we’ve seen the strongest growth in manufacturing jobs since the 1990s. Missouri alone has gained nearly 9,000 new manufacturing jobs since 2010.

On top of that, manufacturers in states like Missouri are realizing that investing here at home is both the right thing to do and the smart thing to do. Many businesses – both here and abroad – are deciding to keep jobs here, bring jobs back to the U.S., or to set up operations here for the first time—a trend called “insourcing.”

We need to do everything possible to support businesses in places like Missouri that are thinking about insourcing. The Obama Administration will continue to call on Congress to pass legislation to give our companies a tax break if they move operations and jobs back.

New Visa Legislation Enables Israeli Investors to Create American Jobs

Last week, President Obama signed into law H.R. 3992, bipartisan legislation introduced by Rep. Howard Berman (CA28), which would further open America to direct investment by Israeli investors, provided Israel reciprocates with similar opportunities for American investors. The law adds Israel to a list of 80 countries whose citizens are eligible for E-2 investor visas.  

E-2 visas are temporary visas granted to investors from a particular list of treaty countries. To qualify for this visa, foreign national investors must intend to come to the United States to develop and direct the operations of a business in which the foreign national must have invested — or be in the process of investing — a substantial amount of capital in the enterprise.  In Fiscal Year 2011, the United States issued 28, 245 visas for this purpose.  

Israel is a significant trade partner with the United States. In 2011, bilateral trade with Israel totaled $26.9 billion, and it is among the U.S.’s top 10 largest per capita export markets. Israel is a world leader in security and defense technologies, medicine, agriculture and clean energy.  As we work to build an America Built to Last, and get our economy back on track, the Obama Administration is focused on supporting and generating investment in these and other critical industries. 

Women Entrepreneurs Are Creating Jobs: An Interactive Timeline

The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression didn’t develop overnight, and it won’t be solved overnight. But while we have a long way to go, over the past 27 months, American companies have added more than 4.3 million jobs. Behind that number are countless small businesses – entrepreneurs with bold ideas and a willingness to dream big. 

President Obama knows that small business owners are the engines of our economy. That’s why he has signed 18 new small business tax cuts into law. As our country continues to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression, we must continue to support and celebrate America’s job creators. 

That’s why StartUp America, the Council on Women and Girls and the White House Business Council have put together an interactive tool to introduce you to some of the women entrepreneurs who are helping our country succeed. Some of these small business owners are on the cutting edge of social media, advanced manufacturing and biotechnology. Others have opened traditional “main street” establishments, such as stores and restaurants. All of them have created jobs, and made their communities better places to work and live. 

Startup Stories: JOBS Act Expands Opportunities for True Investments

Ed note: In honor of Small Business Week, StartUp America is highlighting success stories from American enterpreneurs

Stockbox Grocers is a startup out of Seattle, WA that places neighborhood grocery stores throughout urban areas to increase access to fresh produce, essential staples, and good meals. Stores are tucked inside empty storefronts or reclaimed shipping containers that can be dropped into available parking lots. As a community focused for-profit, we’ve been able to leverage a wide range of support to grow our business from an idea into reality and we expect to continue to fund our development by further cultivating relationships within our community and across the country.  

In Fall 2011, Stockbox opened a prototype store that allowed us to test our unique business model, receive direct feedback from customers, and test key design features. We converted an 8’ x 20’ box into an inviting retail space complete with signage, curtains, community boards, a sitting area, and over 300 unique items sourced from a co-op distributor and local farms. Customers were blown away by the large variety of affordable and fresh food and this new alternative to local mini-marts. 

We were able to open the store in only a few months because of our supporters: community groups welcomed our concept with open arms; local non-profits and government offices helped with outreach and implementation; and we raised much of our funding via a donation-based crowdfunding campaign. This online fundraising platform allowed us to share our story and develop an even wider range of support, collecting almost 200 donors from Seattle and other cities, who contributed more $21,000 in 45 days. 

Carrie Ferrence and Jacqueline Gjurgevich are the co-founders of Stockbox Grocers, a Seattle-based startup that is working to fix the grocery gap in neighborhoods that don’t have access to good food.

The JOBS Act will expand opportunities for Stockbox and other startups to raise funds through similar crowdfunding websites – not just donations but true investments. Stockbox sees these new options as powerful tools in building relationships with investors who are interested in supporting community-based businesses, as opposed to the traditional venture capitalist format.  This will help us reach more people and raise more funds from ordinary Americans (not just the wealthy “accredited” investors currently allowed to invest in most private companies) in a way that is in line with our company’s mission.  And this provides us with resources to scale, in order to open more stores and create more jobs within communities.

National Travel and Tourism Strategy Sets Goal to Draw 100 Million International Visitors to U.S.

As we celebrate National Travel and Tourism Week, the U.S. government is doubling down on its commitment to create more jobs for Americans by growing international and domestic travel and tourism that powers our economy.                                                                      

Last year, 62 million international tourists visited the United States and pumped a record $153 billion into local economies, helping to support the 7.6 million jobs in our travel and tourism industry. These numbers make tourism America’s number one service export.

That’s why the White House released a new National Travel and Tourism Strategy today, charting a new course toward making America a more attractive and accessible destination than ever before. The Strategy sets a goal of drawing 100 million international visitors by 2021, which is expected to generate $250 billion annually in visitor spending by 2012. The strategy also encourages more Americans to travel within the United States.

America is the land of extraordinary natural wonders – from the Grand Canyon to the Florida Keys; from Yellowstone to Yosemite. America is where we do big things, and as a result, we have incredible landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building; the Hoover Dam and the Gateway Arch. This is the land of iconic cities and all their sights – from Independence Hall in Philadelphia to the Space Needle in Seattle to the skyline of Chicago. From the Mall of America to Walt Disney World, we have it all right here.

American Business Leaders Speak Out about the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act

On April 5, 2012, President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, a bipartisan bill that will allow Main Street small businesses and high-growth enterprises to raise capital from investors more efficiently, encouraging small and young firms across the country to grow and hire faster. 

The JOBS Act is a product of bipartisan cooperation, with the President and Congress working together to promote American entrepreneurship and innovation. It will help growing businesses access financing while maintaining investor protections, and includes all three of the capital formation priorities that the President first called for last fall:  allowing “crowdfunding,” expanding “mini-public offerings,” and creating an “IPO on-ramp” consistent with investor protections.  

BUSINESS ASSOCIATIONS

Michelle Long,Executive Director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE)

“Previous laws placed huge restrictions on the investment choices of small, ‘unaccredited’ investors—a category in SEC that included all but the richest two percent of Americans.  The old regulations prohibited the average American from investing in any small business, something that we now expect to be enthusiastically greeted by both business owners and investors across the country.” 

Connecting Grads to Resources to Help You Start a Business

Ed note: This is was originally posted on the Small Business Administration Community blog.

Graduation season is right around the corner and to help grads who are looking to start a small business, SBA and the U.S. Department of Education will host a Twitter Q & A Session on April 25 at 2 pm EDT to connect soon-to-be grads or recent grads with resources that will help them startup, succeed and create an economy built to last.

U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and I will answer your questions about starting a business and  highlight the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) Plan, which supports young college grads who are looking to start a business, join a startup, or work in a public service job by making Federal student loan repayment manageable.  IBR helps to keep loan payments affordable by using a sliding scale to determine how much you can afford to pay on your Federal loans—empowering you to take risks with new opportunities like starting a small business.

Regional Roundup: President Obama Travels to Ohio to Promote Job Training

Yesterday, the President visited Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio to highlight how federal job training funding is providing critical services for unemployed workers and helping them to get jobs in high-demand, high-growth industries. The President sat down with students in the college’s Transformations program for Computerized Numerically Controlled Machining, a program with a proven track record of success – placing more than 90 percent of participants in jobs within three months of graduation.

If Republicans in Congress had their way, they would actually cut funding to programs that help middle class families get back on their feet in order to provide more tax cuts to the wealthy.  That doesn’t make any sense. 

• Their proposed cuts would reduce funding for federal employment and training programs to help laid-off and out-of-work adults–eliminating services to 425,000 Americans in 2013, and nearly 1.1 million in 2014.
• Across America, in 2013 an estimated 13,000 young people and 45,000 in 2014 would also lose employment and training services, and job search assistance services would be eliminated for over 1.4 million job-seekers in 2013 and 3.5 million in 2014.

Guest Post: Through Crowdfunding New Businesses Can Test Ideas with the Toughest Critics -- Customers and Investors

Two weeks after the Haiti earthquake, Anna Stork and I teamed up to start LuminAid Lab out of a shared belief that portable solar lighting could greatly add to the safety and survival of victims of a disaster or crisis. As students and novice entrepreneurs, we faced the 'chicken-and-egg' problem that many small companies confront in scaling up a business without an initial, deep source of cash. We had designed an innovative solar light that would help in aiding disaster relief victims, but we lacked the funding to manufacture our product at a meaningful scale.

We launched our company in January 2011, and last November we launched our "Give Light, Get Light" crowdfunding campaign on a donation-based website, IndieGoGo.com. We established a goal of financing the manufacturing of our first 1,000 lights through the pre-sale of 500 lights. The remaining 500 lights would be donated to partners who offered to field test the product. 

To our surprise, we reached $10,000 within the first week of the campaign and over the next 30 days, we raised more than $50,000, sold 1,500 lights, and had another 3,300 matched to our partners as donations. While we had field tested several dozen lights and continued to optimize our prototype prior to the campaign, we had not anticipated this type of support and call to action from those who participated by sponsoring lights. These donated lights have been sent to schools, orphanages, and development projects around the world.

Crowdfunding provided us with access to our first 1,200 customers, individuals and organizations with whom we now communicate constantly as a result of their pre-purchase of the LuminAID light. While the money gained from the successful campaign was a big financial boost to our efforts, the even more valuable outcome of the campaign was establishing a connection with the first and earliest supporters of our company. We leveraged crowdfunding as a platform that bridged the gap between testing our idea and truly understanding what motivated our first customers to purchase our product.  We are carrying forward this knowledge of what our customers care about as we scale our marketing, sales and distribution efforts. Crowdfunding also allowed LuminAID Lab to engage technology and social media in launching our business and ultimately enabled us to sell our light to people in more than 25 different countries.

It was an honor to have been invited to represent LuminAID Lab at the signing of the JOBS Act at the White House in early April.  Provisions of the JOBS Act will allow small businesses like ours greater access to investor capital through crowdfunding – not just donations, but true investments. Our own experience illustrates the value of establishing crowdfunding as a viable source of funding – it will enable new businesses to truly test out ideas amongst the toughest and most thorough critics: the very first customers and investors who share a part in a company's failure or success.

Learn More about the JOBS Act: 

• New Law Opens Possibilities for our Growth
• JOBS Act Will Help Disruptive Innovation Emerge in Healthcare
• Ask an Entrepreneur: What's Crowdfunding?