Counsel From MSU Product Center Helps Entrepreneurs Create Jobs, Fuel Economic Development Across State
11/2/09
Contact: Sara Long
517-432-1555, ext. 170
EAST LANSING, Mich. -- The Michigan State University (MSU) Product Center is in the business of helping aspiring entrepreneurs turn their dreams into reality and guiding existing business owners through the steps for developing new product lines.
The MSU Product Center, founded in 2003, helps Michigan entrepreneurs develop and commercialize high-value, consumer-responsive products and businesses in the agriculture, natural resources and bioeconomy sectors. The center’s statewide network of innovation counselors provide business counseling support to Michigan residents interested in starting or expanding a business or product line.
So far this year alone, the MSU Product Center has provided business counsel to more than 500 clients through a statewide network of innovation counselors and has served a role in helping to launch 29 new Michigan business ventures. Twenty-four new jobs can be linked to these 29 new businesses, and another 85 jobs have been saved. Together, these 29 new businesses have generated close to $28 million in capital investment and put more than $186 million into the state’s economy.
The MSU Product Center will be hosting its third annual Making It in Michigan Conference on Nov. 11 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Lansing Center in downtown Lansing. One of the highlights of the combination education-trade show event will be the Marketplace specialty food exhibition. Seventy Michigan-made local food products will be on display for sampling and sale, and Lansing-based L&L Food Centers will award two products shelf space in their eight mid-Michigan grocery stores.
Joseph Williams and Lydia Gutierrez are two clients who have achieved success, thanks in part to business counseling provided by the MSU Product Center.
What’s special about these entrepreneurs? For one, they have personal life experiences that cause them to look beyond their professional careers and businesses. They believe there is more to life than being a successful businessperson, and they want to use their capacity for success in business to achieve success in life and pass it along to others.
Joseph Williams, CEO of New Creations Community Outreach, a Detroit-based non-profit organization, and Down Home Cook’n
Joseph Williams is the CEO of New Creations Community Outreach, a Detroit-based non-profit organization that helps men and women transition from the prison system back into society. Williams worked with the MSU Product Center to help launch Down Home Cook’n, a bakery that provides former prisoners on-the-job training for work in food processing, commissaries, restaurants and other food service settings.
Williams’ goal goes well beyond turning a profit by turning out pound cakes and sweet potato pies. As Down Home Cook’n grows, he hopes to employ as many as 100 individuals at a time. He wants to see his products in supermarkets across metro Detroit and at weddings, parties and other events served by catering companies. But he also wants to share what he learns along the path with other social entrepreneurs and give something back to a community that was there for him.
“I was a career criminal between the ages of 15 and 28, and I have not forgotten the people that I left behind who were caught up in that lifestyle,” Williams says. “I received a lot of help along the way, and it’s my way of giving back. A lot of us who have been involved in crime understand the damage we’ve done to society, and some of us have a strong desire to repair that damage. I’ve been on a mission for over 25 years to repair the damage my contemporaries and I caused the community.”
Lydia Gutierrez, president of Hacienda Mexican Foods
Lydia Gutierrez has guided her company and her family through good times and bad, and in realizing success, wants to give back to her community. She is president of Hacienda Mexican Foods, is on the board of the Southwest Detroit Business Association and was named by Gov. Granholm to the Michigan Food Policy Council.
Gutierrez and her late husband, Richard, purchased the company 15 years ago when it was housed in one building and run with a handful of employees. Richard’s family had a history of operating tortilla shops, and he had a strong vision for the company he wanted to build with Lydia.
“We’d be in a meeting and someone would ask me how we worked together, and I’d say, ‘He carries the vision and I carry it out.’ He’d hit me under the table and later would say, ‘You carry the vision, too.’ He saw something in me that I never saw in myself.”
After Richard passed away in 2005, Lydia realized that he was right. She had offers to sell Hacienda, but she realized there was more she wanted to do and that, in fact, she, too, carried a vision for growing the business. Today, nearly 100 employees work under Gutierrez’s guidance in processing, sales and distribution of a line of Hispanic foods. She’s involved in every aspect of the business, and though she grew the business enough to need a third building in 2006, she also realized she needed more.
Profits from the sale of Hacienda’s newest endeavor, a bottled water product, support a project that’s near and dear to Gutierrez’s heart: a new scholarship at MSU for Hispanic students.
Additional story leads from mid-Michigan:
Below are the names of two entrepreneurs from mid-Michigan who will be exhibiting at the Making It in Michigan Conference on Nov. 11 at the Lansing Center in downtown Lansing.
** Sue Spagnuolo, Dolce Vita Dairy, goat cheese, 989-224-3432, sms8003@hotmail.com (Award Winner 2009)
** Justin McLosky, Mandingo Pickles, LLC, pickles, 989-725-7913, mandingopickles@gmail.com
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