SNOHOMISH — Business guidance and support is crucial to increasing your odds of long-term success.
The City of Snohomish Office of Economic Development is committed to fostering a vital small business climate. The city’s partnership with Grow Washington and Girandola Center is off to a great start with a new initiative on the table: SPARK. The acronym is short for Snohomish Partnership to Accelerate businesses through Resources and Knowledge and is being launched to support the already vibrant local entrepreneurial community.
“This is a very grass-roots and also very local approach to small business acceleration and incubation,” said Debbie Emge, economic development manager. “As a small city, we need to draw from the expertise within.”
The local SPARK Snohomish Workshop Series is being run by the business community for the business community. “With so many accomplished business owners, entrepreneurs and content expertise in the community, the program is bound to be a success,” said Carolyn Eslick, Grow Washington founder, mayor of Sutan and SPARK Snohomish program partner.
“SPARK Snohomish was designed using small business incubator industry accepted best practices, but tailored to the needs of local small business owners and pre-business start-ups,” said Tiffany McVeety of Girandola Center, another program partner. McVeety is considered a local incubator expert, having been a speaker and presenter of small business incubation best practices at several National Business Incubation Association conferences.
The SPARK Snohomish initiative will launch as a series of free, before-business-hours workshops. The times were chosen carefully, but may be expanded or modified after the alpha phase of the initiative. The initial four workshops were designed for the entrepreneur at heart with a dream of starting a successful small business, to the existing business owner, who may want new techniques to expand their markets or grow their existing business.
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