PORT ANGELES — Six entrepreneurs who presented business plans to a panel of judges Wednesday in hopes of winning cash awards will find out who made the best impression today.
The Entrepreneurial Challenge, hosted by the Clallam Business Incubator and the Peninsula College Entrepreneur Institute, will award $5,000 to one business and $1,000 each to two runners-up.
The finalists, selected from 29 entries, are SEMinArts, BSG Enterprises, R Software Co. and the Port Angles Farmers Market, all of Port Angeles, and Umami Sea Vegetables and IMPACT Product Development & Marketing, both of Sequim.
After their 15-minute presentations on Wednesday, each of the six will give a three-minute pitch tonight beginning at 6 p.m. at the Incubator@Lincoln Center, 905 W. Ninth St.
Winners will be announced at 8 p.m.
Also guest speaker Nelson Ludlow of Port Townsend — the chief executive officer, director and founder of Intellicheck Mobilisa Inc. — will discuss his business.
The presentations are open to the public.
SEMinArts
SEMinArts LLC, founded by Carolyn Cooper of Port Angeles, is a training, consulting and marketing company aimed at helping businesses thrive in the 21st century.
“I help them have an effective online presence and help with social media marketing,” Cooper said.
“There are a number of ways to do that, depending on what they need.”
Cooper said she started her company after several business owners asked her to help with their online marketing.
“I rapidly realized that a lot of people didn’t have the full information or the right information about online marketing,” she said.
“Therefore they were making poor choices and, in some cases, were making choices that actually were harming their business instead of helping.”
She said she would use the grant money to expand on her current business through training and some more marketing of her own.
For more information, visit www.carolyncooper.com.
BSG Enterprises
BSG Enterprises is a bookkeeping service for small businesses, owned by Becky McGinty of Port Angeles.
McGinty said she started the business after she was laid off from her previous job, which was suffering from the downturn in the economy.
“I was out there looking for a job, and many very-trusted business leaders told me to just stop and start my own business,” she said.
“I appreciated their candor, and I believed what they had to say.
“I have loved every minute of having my own business.”
McGinty said she focuses on helping small businesses because those owners often should be focused on the running of the business.
“I’m able to do the bookkeeping so that they can focus on what they are good at,” she said. “I really feel like my talent and skills are being utilized in this capacity.
“There is nothing like it.”
If she were to win, she said she would probably hire another employee so she could expand.
For more information, phone McGinty at 360-461-4631.
R Software Co.
R Software is an online educational platform that allows an instructor to create a class, teach a class and follow student progress — all in the same program.
It is for businesses or individuals teaching training classes or certification courses.
“Our idea was to have a school-in-a-box course creation,” said CEO Craig Conway of Port Angeles.
“My partner Pat Owens and myself worked for America’s Best Real Estate. We helped develop the software engine that runs the entire company now.”
R Software hosts the distance education classes for America’s Best, he said.
In the next phase of business development, the company plans to help the instructors get certifications for their classes.
For more information, visit www.rsoftwareco.com.
Port Angeles Farmers Market
The Port Angeles Farmers Market, open every Saturday at the Clallam County Courthouse parking lot at Fourth and Peabody streets from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., is hoping to use the grant money to attract more vendors, said Michele d’Hemecourt, market manager.
“We would like to grow the customer base, to grow the vendor base,” she said.
“We’ve already grown significantly, and then also market ourselves to a targeted audience.
“We want to grow from a well-established small organization to doing more and reaching out more.”
The market has been incorporated since 2001 and is a Washington state nonprofit.
For more information, visit www.portangelesfarm ersmarket.com.
Umami Sea Vegetables
Umami Sea Vegetables, owned by Timothy Visi of Sequim, grows edible seaweed, including nori, ogo, flatbrush, dulse and wakame, also known as winged kelp.
Visi hopes to start selling all the varieties to grocery stores and restaurants across Western Washington.
Visi is a biologist who’s worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the commercial fishing industry and for Soliv, a Port Orchard aquaculture company.
He has secured a $40,000 loan from ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia, a nonprofit lender that supports environmentally conscious, locally owned companies.
For more information, e-mail him at seqweedguru1@gmail.com.
IMPACT Product Development & Marketing
Brad Griffith, owner of IMPACT, said he can see things that don’t yet exist.
One example of that is his first product on the market under his IMPACT title — a miniature catapult and competition kit for Boy Scouts.
The kits can be used to learn about engineering, make an attractive display and help the Boy Scouts earn five merit badges while they are at it.
“I’m part of the Olympic Peninsula Inventors group, and one of our main goals is to find stuff that can be produced on the Peninsula,” said the Sequim resident.
“All that being an inventor means is that I can see stuff that doesn’t yet exist.
“My business helps people like me to get their products to market.”
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
