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Date: 8/22/2023
HOLYOKE — The Holyoke Economic Development and Industrial Corporation will be hosting a virtual information session for small businesses interested in learning more about the Maker Loan Program on Wednesday, Sept. 13 at noon.
A MakerLoan is a no interest loan for Makers that is intended for entrepreneurs or micro-businesses that cannot access typical financial services and is intended to build borrower’s financial history and help formalize the business. The loan is for entrepreneurs, sole proprietorships and micro-businesses that employ five or fewer people.
These loans are typically used for start-up costs — typically incurred within the first three years of operations, pre-profit, before businesses can quality for traditional capital — and other small, short-term expenses. Loans are up to $25,000 up to a five-year term with the no interest.
Office of Planning and Economic Development, Development Specialist Marie Brazeau spoke with Reminder Publishing about what the loan offers to Holyokers. Brazeau explained HEDIC has a specific charge of working with industrial uses and manufacturers and less of bigger industry companies.
“We wanted to create a program that would work for smaller organizations. Smaller startup businesses who maybe aren’t on this massive scale, and maybe they’re not going to be able to meet these higher amounts of financing like our traditional loan programs have. We created the MakerLoan program to be a little less bogged down in that area,” Brazeau said.
She added that the MakerLoan would work for someone who is not a traditional manufacturer, but they’re producing a type of good for market.
“We have been using this example: a restaurant isn’t going to qualify for this loan, but if someone’s working in like the Holyoke test kitchen, and they’re producing salsa that they’re jarring and then sending out to a grocery store for resale, they would qualify because they’re a maker and they’re creating something to go out for resale,” Brazeau explained.
Brazeau added this loan is meant to target small businesses, specifically businesses three years or younger who don’t qualify for bank loans yet in a way to potentially assist them with a record of the city having lent to them.
“Then maybe they can grow from there after this loan and qualify for traditional financing and grow their business beyond that. We really want to help those small start-ups,” she added.
Other makers operating a small business that qualify for this type of loan include artists who sell their work and pieces.
“These types of businesses that are producing a good, but they’re maybe not what we would think about when we think of manufacturing in Holyoke,” Brazeau said.
Six to eight total loans will be rewarded through the MakerLoan program but Brazeau added there is potential to add more loans, but it all depends on the applicants received.
For the September virtual information session itself, Brazeau hopes to provide more clarity to those interested and just getting their feet wet. She added she is looking for as many questions as possible for those interested during the session.
She explained the virtual session will include about a 30 minute presentation where she will go over the basic qualifications of the loan and the benefits of the loan compared to traditional financing. After will be an informal office hour where Brazeau said she hopes interested small businesses owners qualified can ask away with any questions. She added she would be able to also assist in filling out a pre-application.
Brazeau said she hopes the businesses that apply and are selected for the MakerLoan can use it to jumpstart and grow their business further. She added that coming out of the coronavirus pandemic, this opportunity means a lot for the city.
“I think we saw a lot of entrepreneurs come out of COVID where people suddenly were getting to invest in themselves and they were spending so much time at home figuring out and making things for the first time and I think that was you know, a really beautiful thing to come out of a hard time for people in general, and now we want to see what can happen from there. How can people grow and invest in themselves and actually create their businesses and how can we jumpstart the economy after all these hard times that people, especially small businesses had in the past couple years,” Brazeau said. “I think it just means a lot to see this Holyoke institution investing so much in these small businesses.”
To register for the session and for more information visit https://www.holyoke.org/makerloan/.