Asheville small businesses have better returns, income than Raleigh, Charlotte: study
ASHEVILLE – A recent study shows that Buncombe County ranks third for small business income and eighth for small business returns in the state of North Carolina ― the highest for any county containing a metropolitan area in the state.
In total, local businesses in Buncombe operate with nearly a 29% return and make up around 12% of the total income in the county. The study from Smart Asset took data from the Internal Revenue Service, along with data from the U.S. Census Bureau, to catalog the income of small businesses in North Carolina.
Out of the top 10 counties in small business returns, seven are in Western North Carolina. Watauga has the highest small business revenue, coming third in the state with a 32% return on small business investment.
Avery comes second in WNC, with a 30% return from small businesses, while Clay, Polk, Buncombe and Macon hover around 29% small business return. The average for these WNC counties is 26% higher than the state average for small business returns.
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Jeffery Kaplan, director of Venture Asheville and a member of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce, said small businesses' higher level of performance may be due to the strength of support systems in the area.
"The entrepreneurial support organizations here are much more connected and know each other much better than other markets — without a doubt," Kaplan said.
Venture Asheville is a local entrepreneurship initiative between the Economic Development Coalition for Asheville-Buncombe County and the Asheville Area Commerce. The initiative aims to provide funding to those interested in beginning a new business and offers venture financing as opposed to loans from a bank.
Kaplan says that an aspect of community is what keeps the local market strong.
"There is a spirit here. When you need somebody, your first reaction is: how can I help you? What do you need?" said Kaplan.
Celia Naranjo, owner of the West Asheville gift basket store Asheville Goods, is one small business owner who said that sense of community support is what helped her launch and stay in business for more than a decade.
She said that she never would have thought about opening a business in the Washington D.C. area, where she is from. In Asheville, that was different.
“I did feel like, ‘Maybe I could do this,’” Naranjo said. “And that was because of the support of Mountain BizWorks and also other local businesses.”
How do small businesses find capital?
Members from Mountain BizWorks, a local nonprofit that serves 26 WNC counties, said the location is what might make the difference.
"Our geography and the tourism it brings ― especially in outdoor recreation ― is huge," Christine Laucher, Mountain BizWorks strategic partnership manager, said in an email. "In our recent Local Business Impact Survey, almost half of our respondents agreed that the landscape and recreational opportunities were important to their business being located in WNC."
Mountain BizWorks is a U.S. Treasury certified nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution, meaning that the nonprofit is designed to lend to distressed communities and provide investment capital to new entrepreneurial activities.
Alongside offering local business loans, BizWorks offers career coaching and a “multicultural catalyst fund,” which aims to provide more funding to entrepreneurs of color.
Since the pandemic, Laucher says that the company has seen more entrepreneurial activity, but has also seen a rise in demand from those most impacted.
"While we’ve seen unprecedented impacts from the pandemic and ongoing challenges, we’ve also seen that the pandemic has sparked a surge in new entrepreneurial activity," said Laucher. "At Mountain BizWorks, we’re also seeing a particular rise in demand from entrepreneurs of color and from rural communities that have been most impacted."
The institution gave out $10.6 million in 2022 with "99% of funding" going to "target markets of woman-owned and BIPOC-owned businesses and rural and low-income entrepreneurs," according to Laucher. BIPOC is an acronym for Black, Indigenous and people of color. In total, the organization has released over $110 million to businesses in Western North Carolina since its founding in 1989.
Asheville small businesses, wrapped up
Naranjo's Asheville Goods, located at 7 Brevard Road, is a gift box shop that specializes in packaging and presenting boxes full of local Asheville products. Starting business in 2011, Naranjo has worked with other local businesses to provide gift boxes that pack in as much Asheville as possible.
When starting her business, Naranjo took a class from Mountain BizWorks, which helped her establish an understanding of needs like funding and pricing. From Asheville Pretzel Company to French Broad Chocolates, Naranjo said part of her business is a motivation to promote other businesses and “go local.”
“Let's try not to just go to Amazon; you can get all these great products locally,” Nanranjo said.
Naranjo also makes a distinct effort to be ecologically friendly. Her gift boxes are not wrapped in plastic but instead are neatly placed in an eco-friendly box.
“We felt it was the aesthetic of a lot of people in Asheville to try and be environmentally conscious and not overly fancy,” Naranjo said.
Naranjo said that seeing others like her helped motivate the creation of Asheville Goods.
“I could meet and see these other people who weren’t unlike me,” Naranjo said. "They weren’t big business people who were doing it. They were just trying to make something work.”
Will Hofmann is the Citizen Times Growth and Development Reporter. Email him at WHofmann@citizentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville small businesses make higher returns than Charlotte, Raleigh
