Changing Attitudes Mean Better Financial Help For Women Entrepreneurs

Mail Tribune:

In the early days of running her niche market clothing company, Sunday Afternoons, Angeline Lacy learned to get by on her own on a shoestring budget.

As her business grew, however, the Talent hat manufacturer needed cash for capital improvements and a larger staff.

“If you are going to grow a business, you’re going to have to borrow money,” says Lacy, “Relationships with bankers and lending companies are really important.”

Lending institutions have capitalized on the growth of women’s entrepreneurship, promoting resources that weren’t necessarily there a decade or two ago.

KeyBank has positioned itself in recent years to chase after the business that lenders often passed up or ignored a few years ago.

Key4Women, a lending and educational program, works with businesswomen from start-up entrepreneurs to companies with $20 million in revenue and beyond. As of March 7, KeyBank had loaned out $118 million to Key4Women clients between Eugene and the California border.

“Women-owned businesses have been a growth segment nationwide,” says Kathryn Bruebaker of KeyBank. “The thrust has been more on counseling and not just limited to lending.”

Cleveland-based KeyBank said recently that it has lent more than $1 billion in capital to qualified women-owned businesses since 2005, beating its February 2008 goal by nearly a year. It has pledged another $2 billion in capital for women-owned businesses during the next five years.

Lacy has been in business for 17 years, beginning in her living room. Four years ago she bought the old firehouse on South Pacific Highway where about 20 employees produce clothing found in REI and other outdoor and travel stores as well as mail order catalogs.