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Matthew Van Orden mops before installing mats at his martial arts school, Blackbelt 4 Life on East River Road. Van Orden made a go of another martial arts business in New York shortly after 9/11, and says he thinks people will continue to spend money on their kids even in an economic slowdown.
James Gregg / Arizona Daily Star
More Photos (1):
Local Harvest Marketplace
Sherry Luna and Philip Ostrom are betting their location will pull their locally grown, organic produce shop through early hard times.
The Local Harvest Marketplace, a convenience store-sized retail space at 3954 E. Speedway, is near neighborhoods where patrons are likely to live and between Whole Foods and Sunflower Market — two places that Local Harvest Marketplace's customers are likely to patronize.
"If it fails, it won't be because of the location," says Luna.
Yes, Luna says, they did consider the economic indicators pointing to a severe recession.
"But my husband said, 'We have the money set aside, people have to eat, let's go ahead.'"
And, says Luna, customers for organic products are not easily moved from what is a lifestyle, not just a consumer choice.
"People who eat organic really want to eat organic," Luna says.
They should know. Ostrom and Luna are the longtime owners of New Harvest Organics of Rio Rico, a distributor of organic regional produce. Before that, they owned a company, High Country Sprouts, that produced and delivered organic alfalfa sprouts to many of Arizona's big grocery stores for several years.
Luna says they learned that there wasn't enough money in sprouts to make a go of it, but that there were a lot of organic growers and ranchers who needed distribution. They got into the distribution business by starting to take along a few other producers' goods when they were delivering their sprouts.
Besides the organic-produce customers' strong loyalty to their lifestyle, Luna says, there is growing demand spurred by the movement to reduce the carbon footprint made by our shopping choices.
She says she and Ostrom chose to carry products — produce, meat and seafood — produced within 250 miles of Tucson, enough range to include seafood from the California coast and and to include items produced in northern Mexico.
"A tomato grown in Hermosillo is a lot closer than one grown in Northern California," she says.
They hope to expand their spread of local goods to include Southern Arizona wines and some chocolate produced in Patagonia.
They also hope to introduce their customers to some of their organic suppliers, starting with their planned Dec. 13 grand opening.
4 others who buck the odds
Blackbelt 4 Life Martial Arts Studio
"I've always had bad timing," says Matthew Van Orden, owner of Blackbelt 4 Life Martial Arts Studio, just days before its planned opening at 5575 East River Road.
Van Orden's first effort, a martial arts studio in Manhattan, was to open Sept. 9, 2001.
"Of course," Van Orden says, "nothing happens on time, so then it was to be Sept. 15 (2001)," four days after two planes flew into the World Trade Center's twin towers.
"We ended up opening in October," Van Orden says, now just a week before the planned opening of his Tucson studio.
That Manhattan martial arts studio survived the post 9/11 economic slowdown and grew, Van Orden says, allowing him to sell, take some time off for travel and start anew in Tucson.
"Now I end up opening (here) in the worst economy in the history of the U.S.," he says.
"I think the last thing people stop spending money on is their kids. I read somewhere that two of the businesses to open during a recession are a day care or a fitness kind of place, and I'm kind of both," says the 36-year-old former University of Arizona student.
Frost Gelato at La Encantada
The hard times made it possible for partners Jeffrey Kaiserman and Stephen Ochoa to open a new Frost Gelato store last weekend in La Encantada, the ritzy Foothills shopping center at North Campbell Avenue and Skyline Drive where they always wanted to be.
Kaiserman said they wanted a Frost in La Encantada even before they opened their first store at Casas Adobes Plaza, 7131 N. Oracle Road, in May 2005and the second, at 7301 E. Tanque Verde Road, in November 2007. But he said the cost of space at La Encantada then was "astronomical."
"We started seeing the downturn in March or April (and) we had an opportunity to strike a better deal, to get the rent where we needed it. It was an advantage."
He believes their product — painstakingly authentic Italian gelato made with imported Italian ingredients and equipment — is recession-proof.
"We're a small luxury," says Kaiserman. "A family of four or even five can get out for under $20. It's not like going out for dinner and spending $70 or $80.
The economic slide did provide some unexpected pain, however. They had to order and lock in a price on new gelato-making equipment six months before the opening, he said, so they paid a much higher price than anticipated because the euro was at a record high against the fallen U.S. dollar.
Kaiserman said they're not only looking to get through this downturn with the new store, but are planning to eventually open stores in the Phoenix area and San Diego based on their La Encantada store.
"This is the future of our growth outside Tucson," Kaiserman said. "It's the kind of shopping center you find in Phoenix or San Diego — outdoor walking shopping centers."
Still, Kaiserman said, "If you're not nervous, there's something wrong with you."
Daley Athletics
Longtime football coach John Daley says there were conditions favorable to opening a new sports video business for high school athletes that outweighed the bad economic signs.
The Pima Community College assistant head football coach is working under contract, awaiting the naming of a new head coach — meaning his future is uncertain. And wife Juli Monroe-Daley is pregnant and working part-time.
But Daley said the upside is that he is a former video producer in Southern California doing "all those goofy half-hour infomercial for cars and the subprime loans before that crashed." Juli was working an accounting job and could handle the business logistics.
Plus, the start-up costs were minimal: They could work out of their home and they already owned the computer and video gear needed to start the business. They simply needed to buy DVD blanks and promote through "guerrilla e-mailing." Daley says. Coaches provide the game clips.
"I've just finished my 13th year of coaching and have not had the experience of a coach not letting his tapes be used," Daley said. "They're trying to get their kids playing in college, too."
Using a video to find a high school student athlete an athletic or academic scholarship is a small investment with a large payback potential, says Daley. And Daley says a video for a student who is not an all-state athlete, but good enough to play college ball at some level, can make a difference.
Using clips from school game tapes, Daley said Daley Athletics can sell a "bare bones" video with game clips, statistics and contact information for $99.
Team season highlights videos on DVD start at $250 and "a couple of bucks a DVD copy, if they're going to use them as a fundraiser," Daley says.
Korey's Lakeside Repair
Korey Kishbaugh isn't fooling himself that his three-month old auto repair business — Korey's Lakeside Repair, 8051 E. Lakeside Parkway — will make it through the recession without some slow times.
"I figured being a small independent I could stay afloat until things get better," says Kishbaugh.
It's a two-man operation. Son Matthew Kishbaugh takes care of the "office stuff, computer, and basic work so I can stay on the diagnostics," Kishbaugh says. He also gets part-time help with overflow work on some Saturdays from an auto technician friend.
Kishbaugh had 10 years of working as an auto mechanic and 14 years years as a shop manager before deciding to open his own shop.
He figures people have already been putting off some repairs because of economic fears "and it's something you can't put off forever."
Kishbaugh took over a lease on garage space already being used for auto repair.
"I had the opportunity to lease this space at the right time. I had been planning on this for quite some time so I had a garage full of equipment that I'd been collecting for years. I probably had $80,000 in equipment and tools saved up specifically to do this," Kishbaugh said.
He figures he spent another $30,000 on diagnostic gear and lifts.
"That's one of the reasons I did it at the time," even though people said " 'You couldn't have picked a worse time.' But I think it will get better."

Business

Bad-times optimists: Tucsonans are opening business despite the economy

By Dan Sorenson
arizona daily star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.30.2008
Despite the gathering economic gloom, some new businesses are popping up in Tucson.
The owners think they have something to offer that will make them recession-proof — or at least see them through the hard times.
Whether these optimistic entrepreneurs are seeing beyond the gloom or looking through rose-colored glasses depends on what they have to offer, says Melinda Burke, of the University of Arizona's Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing.
"I would say regardless of what is happening in the economy, there are ebbs and flows which will create opportunity if the price is right," Burke said.
For example, she notes, the recent hard times have helped Campbell's Soup sales.
"It's about shifting market share," said Burke. "As luxury is losing market share, demand for mid- and low-market (products and services) is increasing."
But in one case, a new Frost Gelato that just opened at La Encantada, co-owner Jeffrey Kaiserman hopes it is luxury — "a small luxury" — that helps people make it through the hard times. Kaiserman says people still need their pleasures, even in hard times, and he hopes gelato makes the cut in frugal family finance.
All the business owners interviewed for this story said they were keenly aware of the current economic conditions.
But each said they had some edge that would not only help them beat the odds against success for new businesses — grim even in boom periods — but get them through the projected hard times: athletic videos that might land a high school athlete a college scholarship; martial-arts lessons for children, the last members of the family on which parents want to skimp; auto repairs, a service that can't be avoided totally; locally grown organic foods, a product for an extremely committed clientele; gelato, a small luxury so low-priced it might make the cut even when frugal families trim other expenses.
Local Harvest Marketplace
Sherry Luna and Philip Ostrom are betting their location will pull their locally grown, organic produce shop through early hard times.
The Local Harvest Marketplace, a convenience store-sized retail space at 3954 E. Speedway, is near neighborhoods where patrons are likely to live and between Whole Foods and Sunflower Market — two places that Local Harvest Marketplace's customers are likely to patronize.
"If it fails, it won't be because of the location," says Luna.
Yes, Luna says, they did consider the economic indicators pointing to a severe recession.
"But my husband said, 'We have the money set aside, people have to eat, let's go ahead.'"
And, says Luna, customers for organic products are not easily moved from what is a lifestyle, not just a consumer choice.
"People who eat organic really want to eat organic," Luna says.
They should know. Ostrom and Luna are the longtime owners of New Harvest Organics of Rio Rico, a distributor of organic regional produce. Before that, they owned a company, High Country Sprouts, that produced and delivered organic alfalfa sprouts to many of Arizona's big grocery stores for several years.
Luna says they learned that there wasn't enough money in sprouts to make a go of it, but that there were a lot of organic growers and ranchers who needed distribution. They got into the distribution business by starting to take along a few other producers' goods when they were delivering their sprouts.
Besides the organic-produce customers' strong loyalty to their lifestyle, Luna says, there is growing demand spurred by the movement to reduce the carbon footprint made by our shopping choices.
She says she and Ostrom chose to carry products — produce, meat and seafood — produced within 250 miles of Tucson, enough range to include seafood from the California coast and and to include items produced in northern Mexico.
"A tomato grown in Hermosillo is a lot closer than one grown in Northern California," she says.
They hope to expand their spread of local goods to include Southern Arizona wines and some chocolate produced in Patagonia.
They also hope to introduce their customers to some of their organic suppliers, starting with their planned Dec. 13 grand opening.
Blackbelt 4 Life Martial Arts Studio
"I've always had bad timing," says Matthew Van Orden, owner of Blackbelt 4 Life Martial Arts Studio, just days before its planned opening at 5575 East River Road.
Van Orden's first effort, a martial arts studio in Manhattan, was to open Sept. 9, 2001.
"Of course," Van Orden says, "nothing happens on time, so then it was to be Sept. 15 (2001)," four days after two planes flew into the World Trade Center's twin towers.
"We ended up opening in October," Van Orden says, now just a week before the planned opening of his Tucson studio.
That Manhattan martial arts studio survived the post 9/11 economic slowdown and grew, Van Orden says, allowing him to sell, take some time off for travel and start anew in Tucson.
"Now I end up opening (here) in the worst economy in the history of the U.S.," he says.
"I think the last thing people stop spending money on is their kids. I read somewhere that two of the businesses to open during a recession are a day care or a fitness kind of place, and I'm kind of both," says the 36-year-old former University of Arizona student.
Frost Gelato at La Encantada
The hard times made it possible for partners Jeffrey Kaiserman and Stephen Ochoa to open a new Frost Gelato store last weekend in La Encantada, the ritzy Foothills shopping center at North Campbell Avenue and Skyline Drive where they always wanted to be.
Kaiserman said they wanted a Frost in La Encantada even before they opened their first store at Casas Adobes Plaza, 7131 N. Oracle Road, in May 2005and the second, at 7301 E. Tanque Verde Road, in November 2007. But he said the cost of space at La Encantada then was "astronomical."
"We started seeing the downturn in March or April (and) we had an opportunity to strike a better deal, to get the rent where we needed it. It was an advantage."
He believes their product — painstakingly authentic Italian gelato made with imported Italian ingredients and equipment — is recession-proof.
"We're a small luxury," says Kaiserman. "A family of four or even five can get out for under $20. It's not like going out for dinner and spending $70 or $80.
The economic slide did provide some unexpected pain, however. They had to order and lock in a price on new gelato-making equipment six months before the opening, he said, so they paid a much higher price than anticipated because the euro was at a record high against the fallen U.S. dollar.
Kaiserman said they're not only looking to get through this downturn with the new store, but are planning to eventually open stores in the Phoenix area and San Diego based on their La Encantada store.
"This is the future of our growth outside Tucson," Kaiserman said. "It's the kind of shopping center you find in Phoenix or San Diego — outdoor walking shopping centers."
Still, Kaiserman said, "If you're not nervous, there's something wrong with you."
Daley Athletics
Longtime football coach John Daley says there were conditions favorable to opening a new sports video business for high school athletes that outweighed the bad economic signs.
The Pima Community College assistant head football coach is working under contract, awaiting the naming of a new head coach — meaning his future is uncertain. And wife Juli Monroe-Daley is pregnant and working part-time.
But Daley said the upside is that he is a former video producer in Southern California doing "all those goofy half-hour infomercial for cars and the subprime loans before that crashed." Juli was working an accounting job and could handle the business logistics.
Plus, the start-up costs were minimal: They could work out of their home and they already owned the computer and video gear needed to start the business. They simply needed to buy DVD blanks and promote through "guerrilla e-mailing." Daley says. Coaches provide the game clips.
"I've just finished my 13th year of coaching and have not had the experience of a coach not letting his tapes be used," Daley said. "They're trying to get their kids playing in college, too."
Using a video to find a high school student athlete an athletic or academic scholarship is a small investment with a large payback potential, says Daley. And Daley says a video for a student who is not an all-state athlete, but good enough to play college ball at some level, can make a difference.
Using clips from school game tapes, Daley said Daley Athletics can sell a "bare bones" video with game clips, statistics and contact information for $99.
Team season highlights videos on DVD start at $250 and "a couple of bucks a DVD copy, if they're going to use them as a fundraiser," Daley says.
Korey's Lakeside Repair
Korey Kishbaugh isn't fooling himself that his three-month old auto repair business — Korey's Lakeside Repair, 8051 E. Lakeside Parkway — will make it through the recession without some slow times.
"I figured being a small independent I could stay afloat until things get better," says Kishbaugh.
It's a two-man operation. Son Matthew Kishbaugh takes care of the "office stuff, computer, and basic work so I can stay on the diagnostics," Kishbaugh says. He also gets part-time help with overflow work on some Saturdays from an auto technician friend.
Kishbaugh had 10 years of working as an auto mechanic and 14 years years as a shop manager before deciding to open his own shop.
He figures people have already been putting off some repairs because of economic fears "and it's something you can't put off forever."
Kishbaugh took over a lease on garage space already being used for auto repair.
"I had the opportunity to lease this space at the right time. I had been planning on this for quite some time so I had a garage full of equipment that I'd been collecting for years. I probably had $80,000 in equipment and tools saved up specifically to do this," Kishbaugh said.
He figures he spent another $30,000 on diagnostic gear and lifts.
"That's one of the reasons I did it at the time," even though people said " 'You couldn't have picked a worse time.' But I think it will get better."
● Contact reporter Dan Sorenson at 573-4185 or dsorenson@azstarnet.com.
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