Coty Skinner, owner of ARganic Woodwork, went from working out of his garage to renting a 3,500-square-foot studio in Searcy, thanks to Small Business Revolution-Main Street.
“Small Business Revolution didn’t finance it; it was just a boost of confidence,” Skinner said. “It was a big change. I played it safe for a long time.”
Searcy won a national online contest out of 12,000 original entries to be featured on season 4 of the eight-part online and Hulu series Small Business Revolution-Main Street. It is sponsored by Deluxe, a national marketing company.
Co-hosts Ty Pennington and Amanda Brinkman picked six Searcy businesses, including Skinner’s, to receive a total of $500,000 in improvements.
A big wrap-up party was held June 21 in Searcy. The camera crews have gone, but the transformation is just beginning, said Mat Faulkner, who originally entered the city in the contest in October 2018 when he saw it on Facebook.
Faulkner is the owner of Think Idea Studio in downtown Searcy, a full-service marketing company. He and Amy Burton, executive director of Main Street Searcy, have been the city’s representatives for the show.
It was an experience that can’t be summed up easily, Faulkner said.
“It’s been a lot of things — it’s been a tremendous amount of work, just from the behind the scenes, but it’s also been so inspiring to see the nation and state pull for Searcy,” he said.
“It’s been a challenging experience for the small-business owners to go through the transformation and be vulnerable to talk about the negatives … and expose yourself on film,” Faulkner said.
“Deluxe was intentional in selecting the six because their stories are all very different,” he said. “By exposing weaknesses along with the successes, so many small businesses across the country can relate to what they see and hear and improve their lives and businesses.
“Each business [chosen in Searcy] is at a different stage. Some are further along, as far as what you’d consider successful with employees. … Some, you’d consider an upstart.”
The five other businesses chosen are Savor + Sip, a coffeehouse and creperie; Zion Climbing Center; El Mercado, an ethnic market; Whilma’s Filipino Restaurant; and nooma, which offers yoga classes and more.
Casey Cox, who co-owns nooma with Nicole Hopkins, raved about the Small Business Revolution-Main Street experience.
“It exceeded our wildest dreams,” she said. “It was a great experience. They were wonderful.”
Cox said nooma received physical changes and savvy advice.
“They knocked out a wall, … doubled the space for [exercise] mats,” she said. “That was really, really great. That was a great huge blessing for us.”
But she said it was the team’s expertise that meant the most. Each business was paired with an expert in that field, Cox said.
“We were hooked up with Stacy Anderson, president of Anytime Fitness,” Cox said. “They have about 2,300 franchise locations on all continents.”
Cox said Anderson came to Searcy and took classes at nooma, and Cox and Hopkins went to Minnesota and toured the Anytime Fitness home office before sitting down for a one-on-one with Anderson.
“We went over all kinds of numbers, any kind of detail. She’s been wonderful to talk with and as a mentor,” Cox said.
Cox said Deluxe is working on nooma’s website and offered “simple things, like different keywords you can put in the website, how you perform with Google.”
Deluxe also produced marketing materials for nooma.
“I don’t think Nicole and I went into it with expectations. We were very thankful from Day 1. [Deluxe and Anytime Fitness] were everyday people like us; they treated us with respect. We feel like we have new friends. We’ll keep in touch with them,” Cox said.
Skinner said Small Business Revolution-Main Street bought “tools and things of that nature” for his business, but also said the education and support meant the most.
“I loved working with them. It was a lot of knowledge. They did a lot for me, but … they didn’t make any decisions,” Skinner said. “They educated you on the decisions you needed to make, then helped you implement them. I learned a lot as a small-business owner. Having an entire team of people who do marketing and do nothing but small businesses, it was a great experience.”
Faulkner said other businesses, such as Savor + Sip, had recently renovated their space, “so from an outsider’s perspective, it’s not so apparent.”
However, he said Deluxe helped the businesses with finances, operations and marketing, “which will help them grow, but it’s not visible.”
On the flip side, he said, “You can go to Whilma’s Filipino Restaurant now, and it looks completely different than it did.”
What’s a moment that stands out from the experience?
“There were so many moments; it’s almost hard to remember everything,” Faulkner said. “There were special moments, for sure, leading up to the win. One was where we had all groups of people in the community working together to win the vote, and the 10 minutes of nonstop screaming when we found out we won the vote” at the watch party in the Rialto Theater.
“This is truly a process,” Faulkner said. “There were not climatic moments every day; it’s a process.”
Faulkner said he and Amy Burton, executive director of Main Street Searcy, also visited Deluxe headquarters in Minneapolis in May, along with the Searcy small-business owners.
“That was one of the first times we got to travel with small-business owners and sit with them around meals and chit chat with them about their experiences. … While we were there, Deluxe hosted a dinner, and we got to see all the different people who are involved in creating this show — experts and the Deluxe team, the film crew, just everybody. And they came from all over the U.S.: California and Austin and New York. It was fun to see what all goes into producing this show and helping all businesses and helping Searcy.”
Faulkner also said one of his favorite memories was the 180-member Searcy Community Choir, created just to perform at the finale event.
“That was special. We wanted to represent the diversity of the residents who create our town, while giving a nod to the fact that Searcy is a strong faith-based community,” he said.
He said Searcy is continuing to work on tourism because once the show airs Oct. 8, city residents want visitors to see all that Searcy has to offer.
“When they walk into the door of Sip + Savor, or nooma or El Mercado, … we want a way to then share the love and get them to go visit other small businesses and attractions that continue to make Searcy a great place to eat and visit and shop.”
Faulkner is chairman of the Small Business Committee for the Searcy Regional Chamber of Commerce; vice president of the Searcy Regional Economic Development Corp. Board of Directors.; and co-director of Searcy Beats & Eats, a monthly festival, as well as director of the Think Art project.
He and the six small-business owners who will be featured on the show will speak at 10:30 a.m. July 23 at the chamber’s business expo at the Ganus Activity Center at Harding University.
“Small-business owners are going to be sharing tidbits of what they learned through their process; insight … it will be a neat experience for people to kind of hear it from the horse’s mouth,” Faulkner said.
He also said city leaders have met to discuss the show and the experience and “what’s going to propel Searcy forward, other than just this show, so Searcy is experiencing a positive revolution for the long haul.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.