There are all kinds of small businesses in Iowa that we can’t do without, from diners and donut shops to tailors and auto mechanics, and it’s time to recognize those merchants that make our lives better.
Ryan Lincoln, the Iowa district director of the U.S. Small Business Administration, says the agency is taking nominations for its annual Small Business Week Awards, which recognize exceptional small business owners from across Iowa.
“It can be a manufacturing base, it can be a restaurant, it can be an exporter. This is somebody that betters their community through all their actions. I’d call it an anchor business,” Lincoln says. “If you were to remove that business from a community, that community may suffer. That’s the type of impact that we’re looking for.”
More than 95-percent of the businesses in Iowa are considered small businesses, and Lincoln says they welcome nominations from employees and patrons of businesses that have a few hundred workers — or just a few.
“For the coffee lovers out there, if you love a mom-and-pop coffee business,” Lincoln says, “that would be a perfect one because I can think of one or two in the state that if they weren’t there, the community would be worse off.”
There are several categories in the awards, including manufacturers, exporters, blue collar businesses, and veteran-owned businesses. Lincoln says given the nature of agriculture in Iowa, some fantastic businesses may not be very well known even in the next county over.
“There’s a huge manufacturing base in the state of Iowa,” he says. “It’s just nobody knows about that because you get outside of the Des Moines area and you get 40 miles to the north, bang a left on Highway 20, bang a right on dirt road <insert name> and then there you go. There is a multi-million-dollar manufacturing process that is there that nobody would know about.”
Lincoln implores Iowans to go the extra mile to support locally-owned businesses, and you don’t have to wait for special events like Black Friday or Small Business Saturday next month.
“Everything that we do as consumers can affect a small business in some way. Maybe it just takes a little bit of effort,” Lincoln says. “Instead of going and hitting the big box store, maybe go down to your local hardware store and get something because that makes a difference for that family and that community more than just getting on Amazon and ordering the next best thing.”
Nominations must be submitted by December 7th at SBA.gov/nsbw — that’s for National Small Business Week.
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