Adelante! Hispanic business growing by leaps and bounds - includes related article

New Mexico Business Journal, Dec, 1992 by Arlene Cinelli Odenwald

1990 HISPANIC POPULATION
                         Hispanic     All U.S.       Hispanic
                       population   population   as a percent
State                     (1,000)      (1,000)         of all
New Mexico                    579        1,515          38.22
Texas                       4,340       16,987          25.55
Florida                     1,574       12,938          12.17
California                  7,688       29,760          25.83
Arizona                       688        3,665          18.77
Colorado                      424        3,294          12.87
New York                    2,214       17,990          12.31
New Jersey                    740        7,730           9.57
Nevada                        124        1,202          10.32
District of Columbia           33          607           5.44
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce News

By the year 2000, Hispanics will represent the nation's largest minority population, with political and business clout that was only dreamed of a decade ago.

There is no way to separate business and commercial influence from political influence and the statistics show Hispanic businesses are justifiably flexing their muscles.

The business clout is obvious in New Mexico, Texas, Florida, California, Arizona, Colorado and even New York.

The latest completed census, incidentally, shows there were 422,373 Hispanic firms doing business in the United States, with gross receipts soaring from $11.8 billion in 1982 to $24.7 billion in 1987. Statisticians predict that these figures were considerably up by 1990 and still climbing.

New Mexico meanwhile has the largest share of firms owned by Hispanics in the United States with 17.4 percent of all firms in the state and 9.6 percent of all gross receipts.

According to the 1991 Bureau of Census report, New Mexico now has 14,299 Hispanic-owned firms.

The latest census contends 38.2 percent of New Mexico's population is Hispanic, but Jose Armas, an expert on Hispanic culture, contends the figure is probably nearer to 50 percent than 38 percent because of the survey approach by the census.

New Mexico clearly winds up a microcosm of what is happening in the Hispanic culture across the nation.

"Hispanic purchasing power today in the United States is at $183 billion," contends Armas. "It is the fastest growing purchasing block in the country."

Armas calculates that Hispanic purchasing power in New Mexico is about $6 to $7 billion annually.

During the 1980s, the Hispanic population in the United States grew by 52 percent, but even more importantly, Hispanic purchasing power grew by 70 percent.

A good example and a parallel to the growth of Hispanic firms is Contract Associates, an Albuquerque commercial and retail office furniture business.

Seven years ago, the company started out with six employees and today has 36.

Gross sales for the company went from under $1 million the first year to more than eight times that gross amount this year, says Maria Raby-Mondragon. She owns 51 percent of the burgeoning Hispanic company, with the remaining shares owned by her four brothers and a sister.

Contract Associates has garnered its share of attention through its work ethic, only recently landing a contract with Los Alamos National Laboratory and opening a satellite office in Los Alamos.

The company was named Minority Supplier of the year by LANL; the Rio Grande Minority Purchasing Council lavished recognition; and the Small Business Administration presented Contract Associates with an Award of Excellence.

The sole distributor of Haworth furnishings in New Mexico, Contract Associates ranked 30th among 350 Haworth dealers across the country.

Similar success stories for Hispanic-owned companies are cropping up throughout the state -- from Taos to Silver City, Grants to Tucumcari, Santa Fe to Albuquerque to Las Cruces to Alamogordo to Carlsbad.

Shuttlejack Inc., owned by Harvard-educated Ray D. Sena, has become the seventh largest bus company in the United States and the largest privately owned bus company in the nation.

Sena started the business 14 years ago with six employees. Today he has 300 and the business has doubled in size over the past three years.

While most think of Shuttlejack as the bus company ferrying passengers to and from Santa Fe from Albuquerque International Airport, its New Mexico operation represents only two percent of its total business.

Shuttlejack has offices in San Francisco, New York, six cities in Texas; Vancouver, Canada; and Monterrey, Mexico.

"We are the largest Hispanic-owned business in Texas," says Sena. The company, incidentally, received the New Mexico Small Business Award in 1989, presented by U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici.

Shuttlejack also was a pioneer in Spanish language media advertising.

Bueno Foods of Albuquerque, with president Jackie Baca at the helm, went from a gross of $5 million in 1984 to $12 million in '91 pushing its delectable Hispanic cuisine and employing about 150 workers.

Leroy Pacheco, executive director of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce, says New Mexico Hispanic-owned or operated companies are making indelible marks in the business world.