Arkansas’ post-pandemic “matchmaking” conference helps put small business owners back in the game

May 30 - June 5, 2022

By Wesley Brown

As small business owners emerge from the pandemic to get their operations back on track, a “matchmaking meetup” sponsored by the state’s Economic Development Commission (AEDC) last week proved to be the right vehicle to jumpstart those plans.

On May 11, AEDC’s Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise (MWOBE) Division hosted its annual matchmaker event at the Heifer International headquarters in Little Rock, where more than 200 vendors were able to meet-and-greet with small business owners from a range of industries seeking to shake off the post-pandemic dust.

According to MWOBE Director Esperanza Massana-Crane, the AEDC Matchmaker Event is a signature event for business owners looking to schedule key appointments with various private and public sector vendors to discuss possible contracts for their goods and services. Held in partnership with the U.S. Small Business Administration’s District Office in Little Rock and the Arkansas Procurement Technical Assistance Center, most of the 155 business-owner participants that registered for this year’s event were excited to network and be around other like-minded people, she said. 

By promoting networking opportunities and pre-arranging one-on-one “speed-dating style” appointments, Massana-Crane said the event annually serves as a useful tool for both businesses and vendors seeking to secure contracts. During this year’s all-day event, business owners were matched with over 30 buying representatives based on information provided during the registration process.

“It was satisfying because there is a lot of work that goes into doing this event. I received a lot of emails after the event with people saying how beneficial it was for them and how much they needed this event. Also, we were able to do it in person, so that helped a lot,” said Massana-Crane, who was named director of the MWOBE program by Gov. Asa Hutchinson in January 2021. “Honestly, I’ve heard nothing but really good things about the event …, whether it was a small business or one that has been in operation for a while and is a little more robust, I think everybody benefited from it.”

Massana-Crane said she was overwhelmed by the diversity of the businesses that attended the event, ranging from a rice farmer in Phillips County and local environmental engineers to ice cream shop owners and a large number of women-owned firms of all sizes and industries.

Two attendees at the matchmaking event that were wowed by the experience were a husband-and-wife business team Jerome and Tavonia Strickland. The Conway couple in 2018 left their corporate jobs in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to Central Arkansas, where they have been operating two franchises full-time since the pandemic started in March 2020. 

Together, the couple decided to move a franchise of the business-to-business consulting firm Schooley Mitchell to Conway, where they specialized in cutting costs and redundancies for companies of all sizes. The Stricklands are also owners of a Mosquito Shield franchise, which Tavonia joked was a business of convenience due to losing the use of her backyard because of the pesky bugs. 

Both Tavonia and Jerome said they were able to connect with business prospects during the AEDC event that could lead to some promising sales in the future. “We made connections here and learned so much that could help our businesses, but the best part was the matchmaking where we were able to sit down with [vendors] and networked other business owners who can help our companies grow in the future,” said Tavonia Strickland.

Added husband Jerome: “The event overall was really uplifting for us.”

Massana-Crane said the all-day business conference also allowed her office — which includes longtime MWOBE Certification Program Manager Karen Castle — an opportunity to educate minority and women business owners about being certified with the state of Arkansas.

Under Massana-Crane and Castle’s guidance, there were 329 businesses certified through the AEDC’s certification program at the end of February. Now one of the 15 newly created cabinet level departments under Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s 2019 restructuring plan, AEDC and MWOBE are now divisions of the Commerce Department led by Secretary Mike Preston. Massana-Crane said state certification allows those businesses to bid on state contracts and gain access to educational and other resources that AEDC now offers as part of the Arkansas Department of Commerce. 

“Certification is certainly one of the areas we’ve tried to focus on,” said Massana-Crane. “[Karen] is swamped with getting applications in that are interested in getting certified, which is a really good thing. So, we are just trying to create a little more awareness around those programs that benefit businesses and bring attention to considering doing business with the state government.”

In August 2017, Gov. Asa Hutchinson and AEDC officials announced that the mission of the state’s Small and Minority Business Program would be expanded to include women-owned businesses. At the time, it was also renamed the Division of Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise by Act 1080 of 2017. 

New annual spending targets for the State of Arkansas were also set at that time at eight percent for minority businesses, five percent for women-owned, and two percent for service-disabled veterans in construction, goods, and services, totaling 15% for vendors in those categories. Today, the division promotes the growth and sustainability of such businesses by providing real-world technical and professional assistance, state vendor certification, and opportunities for networking and contracting with AEDC partners in state and federal government, higher education, lending institutions, and the private sector.

Besides the matchmaking, the morning-to-afternoon conference included morning and afternoon workshops and a lunch program featuring guest speaker Sidney Moncrief, a five-time NBA All-Star and former Arkansas Razorback star. After making deals, all the attendees were invited to a joint reception with the attendees of AEDC’s Rural Development Summit on the evening of May 11.

Massana-Crane said her office is also now developing a more robust state directory of minority and women-owned firms across the state, something that the business community has requested for years. As AEDC’s former marketing director, Massana-Crane said part of her role as MWOBE director is sharing the successes of small business owners in Arkansas and helping them find the resources they need.

“Ultimately our goal is to help and strengthen minority and women-owned businesses by providing them with resources. But when I say resources, I am not necessarily talking about the financial ones but the educational ones and anything to assist them in their growth,” said the former El Salvador native. 

“But also, from an economic development standpoint is to tell the story of these amazing businesses. If any business in that room would have gotten up and had three to five minutes to talk about their businesses and what they do, I think we all would be floored about the richness and diversity of the businesses that were represented there,” said Massana-Crane.  

Photo Caption:

Esperanza Massana-Crane, director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission’s State Minority and Women Business Enterprise division.