Around the world in 7 stores: S.J. shopping center a reflection of county's wide diversity

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(Record, The (Stockton, CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 24--STOCKTON -- Nearly three years after opening her House of Elegance Salon in Weston Ranch, Vesha Walters finds herself in a bit of a slump.

A number of her clients from nearby subdivisions have moved away in pursuit of new jobs or to cash in home equity gained in the real estate boom of the past few years.

"I'm kind of in that starting-all-over stage," Walters said recently.

Still, she considers the salon a success. It's an ongoing business that allowed her to buy a home in Patterson. And she's looking for a location in that community to open another House of Elegance.

"It's motivated me to go for everything I wanted to do," she said. "It's all happened since I've been here."

Here is the Weston Ranch Commercial Center, a neighborhood shopping center anchored by a Food 4 Less supermarket. It may seem like any of a thousand such commercial strips, complete with chain businesses such as Subway, Hollywood Video and Curves.



But look closer and you'll also find Manila Foods, a Filipino grocery and deli; Cascada Juice and More, serving Mexican-style fresh-fruit drinks, smoothies, and American and Mexican foods; Walter's House of Elegance, offering hair care for blacks and everyone else; and Indian Grocery Outlet, a small shop offering a variety of south Asian foods among many other minority-owned businesses.

The latter's owner, M. Jahil Hay, draws trade from Weston Ranch residents who can't find their favorite foods at the nearby supermarket. Customers include Indians, Afghans, Pakistanis, as well as ethnic Indians who hail from places such as the Caribbean, South Africa and South Pacific.

"This is the melting pot of Stockton," Hay said. "It's the United Nations. It really is."

That diversity is a reflection of San Joaquin County's full spectrum of races and cultures. The 2000 Census found more than 40 percent of county residents classify themselves as nonwhites. Of the more than 34,000 county firms tallied in the 2002 economic census, nearly 5,000 reported Asian ownership, another nearly 5,000 were Latino-owned and more than 1,000 were owned by blacks. There could be some overlap in those figures as the 2002 census, for the first time, allowed business owners to report their background from more than one racial or ethnic group.

The overwhelming majority of county businesses were mom-and-pop operations -- more than 25,000, or 70 percent, had no paid employees, the 2002 census found. Among the only group for which the census provided a breakdown, more than 80 percent of Latino-owned businesses reported no paid employees.

It's a reality that Gillian Murphy sees every day as director of the San Joaquin Delta College Small Business Development Center in downtown Stockton.

Latinos comprise almost 25 percent of her cliental, blacks are 17 percent and Asian-Pacific Islanders, 12 to 13 percent.

"What I'm happy to say is that we mirror very closely the region's ethnic makeup," said Murphy, whose agency provides free and low-cost services to small-business owners in San Joaquin, Calaveras, Amador and Alpine counties.

The region's history of minority business ownership goes back to the mid-19th century and the California gold rush, said Tod Ruhstaller, director of The Haggin Museum. Initially, Chinese and blacks, both as free men and as slaves, came to work the gold fields. More Chinese followed to help build the railroad and, later, as farm labor.

Over the decades since, San Joaquin County has seen successive waves of immigration, largely driven by the need for agricultural labor and changing politics. Those include Japanese and south Asian immigrants, followed by Filipinos, Mexicans under the Bracero program, and Southeast Asians following the Vietnam War. There was also an influx of Indian, Pakistani and Filipino immigrants, largely with degrees in medicine and other professions, in the late-1960s through 80s.

San Joaquin County's vibrant immigrant communities have contributed much to minority entrepreneurship, said Mark Plovnick, director of economic development at University of the Pacific.

By choosing to move to a new country, tackling the unknown in hopes of building a better life for themselves and their children, immigrants show they have qualities needed to run a business.

"That's the kind of spirit that also leads to entrepreneurial activity," Plovnick said. "Those are the ingredients you find in entrepreneurs: willing to work hard and take risks.

"America as a country has a higher proportion of entrepreneurship because so much of our population has come from elsewhere and, in many cases, not so many generations ago," he said.

Attitude and culture do play a part in immigrants choosing to run their own businesses, said Tom Larson, economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles. However, so do barriers to landing a good-paying job.

"In an immigrant community, you tend to have high rates of self-employment because they have a hard time getting good jobs in the regular labor market," said Larson, who has studied the impact of local-government, affirmative-action programs for minority and women-owned businesses in the state.

A lack of employment opportunities in San Joaquin County is one reason Joga Singh owns and operates the $1 Only Store in the Weston Ranch shopping center.

"Give me a job; I'll give you this thing," he said of his nearly 3-year-old business.

San Joaquin County's recent housing boom -- new homes going up at the rate of 5,000 to 6,000 per year through last summer -- helped bring shoppers to Singh's store. But many of those new residents continue to work in the San Francisco Bay Area, he noted.

"If they can get a job here, nobody would commute to San Jose ... 150 miles every day," Singh said.

Running a mom-and-pop retail store or restaurant may well be better than the minimum-wage dead-end jobs most easily obtained by immigrants facing language and cultural barriers, Larson said.

But their English-speaking offspring, often with better educations, tend to seek other paths.

"The self-employment rate for Korean immigrant males is just phenomenal," he said. "When you get into the second and third generation, they're more likely to pursue more conventional ways of earning a living."

That pattern is the same for European immigrants as well, he noted.

"It's a way to get started in America."

Many of these fledgling businesses operate on a shoestring. The shops may carry scant stock and employ a minimum of furnishings and displays, Larson noted.

This approach provides low start-up costs, he said, "but that's not the kind of business that's going to be easy to develop."

Such minority business owners may also lack formal training.

"A lot of these entrepreneurs haven't taken a course in business. They are just running it by the seat of their pants," Larson said.

Also they may be hampered by limited access to investment capital, either in personal resources or bank loans, to build their businesses.

Some business owners, of course, overcome these hurdles and establish an enterprise that can grow.

Such is the case for Fritz Chin Photography in Stockton, founded by Fritz Chin, a native of China, and his wife, Liza, from Seoul, South Korea.

They began photographing weddings in the late 1960s and opened their studio on Pacific Avenue in 1973. Now, their son, managing director Arnold Chin, handles the reins.

The younger Chin said his philosophy is to reinvest a portion of the profits every year back into the photography business, creating in new products and services, hiring new employees, expanding his market.

"We're always trying to push forward and grow and grow," he said. "Any small business that wants to survive has to constantly improve."

That drive for improvement led to a $100,000 project in 2005 that provided three expanded photo studios and a larger customer lobby, as well as a gallery and client meeting room.

Unfortunately, Fritz Chin Photography is more the exception than the rule, Chin said.

"It's nice there's minority business but ... those minority businesses are not making a huge dent in unemployment numbers for San Joaquin County," he said.

Minority-owned firms do tend to be smaller with less revenue than businesses overall, the 2002 Economic Census found.

While California's more than 2.9 million businesses averaged $961,000 in annual sales that year, on average Asian-owned firms reported about $338,000 in receipts, Latino businesses had about $134,000 in sales and black-owned firms put about $86,500 into the till.

Finding a market and building sales volume is are challenges faced by all small businesses and require determination, hard work and a bit of luck to overcome.

Take Abraham and Hidolina Miranda, owners of the Cascada Juice and More shop in Weston Ranch. Abraham Miranda said the couple investigated franchise opportunities, including a national smoothie chain, but were discouraged by the high capital and net worth requirements.

Opening the the shop more than two years ago was a struggle -- stalled by an unreliable contractor and trouble with the building code -- , but they have steadily expanded the business from its base offering of fresh-squeezed juice drinks and smoothies to add salads, tortas, hot dogs, hamburgers, tostadas, ice cream desserts and more.

Still, said Abraham Miranda, he's doing little better than breaking even on the venture.

"It's not easy," he noted recently and speculated. "If we can do more advertising, maybe we can build this up."

Miranda said he and his wife got started with a catering truck in the San Jose area, which is a money maker and that they continue to run. In addition, they opened a second Cacasda Juice shop this year in downtown Stockton.

"We like challenges," said Miranda, who wore a cast from an Achilles tendon injury. He advised:

"If you still can walk, just keep going. Don't look back."

Contact reporter Reed Fujii at (209) 546-8253 or [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, The Record, Stockton, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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