Big Risks to Starting a Business Worth It For Many Latino Entrepreneurs

Running your own business is hard, and it can be even harder if you’re Latino in Nebraska, whether you were born here, like 60 percent of the state’s Latino population, or immigrated here. Nebraska’s Hispanic/Latino population is growing rapidly, expected to triple in the next 35 years, and with this growth comes a growth in Latino-owned businesses. The challenges Latino entrepreneurs face is worth it for the opportunities they have in Nebraska. (Note: A longer version of this story appeared on NET News.)

Industrial sewing machines sporadically purr at the hands of Marta Chavez and Delores Diarcos in one corner of a 700 square foot room. There’s not a lot of space to move around here. Between the bolts of material, the brightly-colored girl’s outfits that adorn mannequins and hang from rods along one wall, and a long work table full of more supplies.

At one end of that table 55-year-old Yolanda Diaz uses scissors to cut a piece of brown material for a skirt. This space in a central Omaha office building is home to Little Miss Fashion. Diaz started the business in 2004, but her interest in fashion began much earlier, as a young girl in the Mexican city of Chihuahua.

“I loved clothing and fashion and all this, but part of the big family in Mexico, (there was) no money for that,” Diaz recalled. “So I was start thinking, ‘Well I can make that.’ I did. I used to make my clothes when I was a little girl.”

Doing alterations helped her pay for college. Diaz graduated and got a good job with the Mexican government, but realized she could make more money making clothing. She started a business making children’s clothing, and in 1996 she moved to Omaha, bringing with her the same ambition. Launching Little Miss Fashion took time, and wasn’t easy. But once a showcase at an Omaha fashion show connected her to an online retailer, zulily.com, business really took off. With Diaz and six employees (two full-time and four part-time), Little Miss Fashion now sells 200 to 400 dresses, skirts and other pieces a week. All are for pre-teen girls, and all are designed by Diaz, who said “every new design is my favorite.”

“The line of Little Miss Fashion is dressing your little girl to shine,” Diaz said. “I love doing it.”

For anyone, starting a business is hard work. Diaz says she works 16-18 hours a day, seven days a week. But she says being a Latino in Nebraska means additional challenges.

"For me, the most difficult thing as a Latino, it was you don’t know the system,” Diaz said, “and how to do everything in the right way, and you have to look for somebody who really inform you how to do everything right. This is the hard part.”

In spite of the challenges, Hispanic/Latino business owners are finding success in Nebraska. A study of recently-released Census information from the early 2000s noted the number of Hispanic-owned businesses increased more than 50 percent, a faster rate than overall business growth, and experts believe that trend continues. Lissette Aliaga-Linares worked on that study, and continues to track Latino businesses in Nebraska for her job with the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Office of Latino/Latin American Studies.

"You have more Latinos in the labor force and more Latinos that are—will be more likely to become entrepreneurs," Aliaga-Linares said. “They want to move out of low-paid jobs, you know, so a venue for social mobility and family investment."

A few trends Aliaga-Linares has observed include that the types of business Latinos own are defined by gender, with male-owned businesses tending to be in construction and female-owned businesses concentrated in health care and social assistance. More than half are home-based, and a third are family or husband-wife businesses. Latino-owned businesses are more likely to retain workers, something Aliaga-Linares said could be attributed to the family connections of these businesses. “One of my speculations is maybe these are very family-oriented businesses; it is much different to fire your cousin than any other people that you just hired,” Aliaga-Linares said.

But they’re also more likely to fail than other businesses. Many are new and lack business plans, which makes survival harder. Aliago-Linares said money is also an issue. “These are very under-capitalized as start-ups, and usually when you have low capital to start with, you have also low probability of survival.”

Helped in part by two small business loans. Little Miss Fashion has grown from its start in Yolanda Diaz’s basement. Diaz said there are challenges, but called Nebraska a good place for Latino entrepreneurs. She said the cost of doing business is low, the “economy is stronger here than other states, and there are a lot of opportunities for getting everything you need.”

In the near future she hopes to move into a Latino-owned business park being developed in south Omaha. “I will be in a big space, 10 times bigger than this one,” Diaz said, when asked about her vision for the future of Little Miss Fashion. “I see my company with maybe 50 employees, and I see my company with a store open. Little Miss Fashion store.”

Big dreams that started with a little girl and her passion for fashion.