Minority-owned businesses gain foothold in Northwest Arkansas

Tom and Anna Tang's family was the only Chinese family they knew of in Siloam Springs when they moved there 30 years ago to start the town's first Chinese restaurant.

They knew almost no English, used their life savings for the venture and had to take dayslong trips to get the right ingredients, said their daughter, Shu Lan Tang. They worked at least 12 hours a day and made their rolls from scratch as customers lined up at the door for a $4.99 lunch special. They learned how to handle the necessary permitting and taxes as they went.

Today, the undertaking would go very differently, Tang, 34, said.

Instead of a small group of area Chinese restaurant owners, there's a Chinese Association of Northwest Arkansas. She estimated there are a couple thousand Chinese people in Northwest Arkansas, whether they're students, teachers or corporate employees. The U.S. Census Bureau reported 1,321 Chinese residents lived in Benton and Washington counties in 2010.

"Now there's a Chinese restaurant everywhere," Tang said in Tang's Asian Market, one of her family's businesses in Springdale. More restaurants made the business more competitive, she said, but "you have people here who are the same as you who can help."

As it grows and becomes more diverse, the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan statistical area is gaining a reputation as a place where minority-owned businesses can start and succeed.

SmartAsset, which provides financial research and advice, named the area the nation's third-best for minority ventures this month based on how many are in the region and how well they do financially. The Seattle area and the Tennessee-Virginia border area topped the list.

SmartAsset's report relied on data from the Census Survey of Business Owners from 2012, the most recent version. It found more than 5,000 of Northwest Arkansas' 40,000 firms were at least 51 percent minority-owned. Most were owned by Mexican or other Hispanic people.

According to those numbers, 13 percent of businesses in the region are minority-owned, lagging the area's 24 percent minority-group population in 2012.

Each minority-owned business averaged more than $300,000 in sales, receipts or shipment values, compared with more than $470,000 for nonminority businesses. On the other hand, SmartAsset found minority-owned businesses also were more profitable than their counterparts.

In March, the publication Fast Company put the Northwest Arkansas metropolitan area at No. 2 in the country for minority entrepreneurs as well.

Several local experts and business owners credit the favorable business climate to a growing number of organizations that are aiming their efforts at entrepreneurs from minority groups. The reports counted as minorities people who are black, Asian, American Indian or the overlapping categories of Latino and Hispanic, which refer respectively to people from Latin America and people from predominantly Spanish-speaking countries and can include people of any skin color.

Together those groups make up about one-fourth of the metropolitan area, which covers Benton, Madison and Washington counties and McDonald County in Missouri, according to the Census.

"What has made it right is the cooperation -- from the Northwest Arkansas Council to the Walton Family Foundation to the Small Business Administration, the chambers [of commerce], plus the university working together to make this happen," said Jay Amargos, who in the past worked on the Rogers-Lowell Chamber of Commerce's multicultural committee and as head of minority small-business inclusion for Startup Junkie Consulting in Fayetteville.

"The help is definitely there -- it has definitely become more than it used to," Amargos said.

The Rogers-Lowell chamber, for example, has offered seminars on business basics in Spanish and classes with the University of Arkansas' Small Business and Technology Development Center on how to secure government contracts, loans and other topics. Center consultant Martha Londagin said a similar course with the Fayetteville chamber is coming up in September.

Steve Cox, the Rogers-Lowell chamber's senior vice president of economic development, said the group would be doing a disservice to the community if it didn't reach out to minority-group members, women and veterans looking to start a business.

"Whether you've grown up here your whole life or are immigrating from another area, it's always a daunting task" to start a business, Cox said.

"Not just Rogers, but Northwest Arkansas as a whole is doing things the right way, where everyone is treated equal regardless of background," he said.

Metro on 07/31/2016