2017 Impact Report

Where are they now?:A Look at Early NCIFund Borrowers

NCIFund’s primary goal is to help entrepreneurs in underserved communities create employment through businesses that are good stewards of natural resources. We do this by helping companies that can’t obtain financing from traditional sources get the early financing and assistance they need to grow and “graduate” to conventional funding. We checked in recently with a few of our early borrowers to see how they’ve fared.

Neil Moye started farming right out of high school with the help of a local bank loan co-signed by his father, who ran the local grocery store in Ayden.   He began as a traditional tobacco and row crop farmer, but diversified his operations with antibiotic-free hogs and turkeys. 

Neil and his wife Jackie also kept a few Jersey cows, and they believed a Jersey dairy could be successful in North Carolina’s hot, humid climate. Neil planned to use his tobacco settlement payout to fund his start-up, but still needed additional capital.  NCIFund’s 2008 loan helped him buy used milking equipment, 60 Jersey calves, fencing, and build the dairy barn needed to launch Simply Natural Dairy Farm.

The dairy was profitable from the start, but Neil knew he needed to add value to his milk to succeed in the volatile dairy industry.  So, in 2014, with a feasibility study funded by the USDA’s Value-Added Producer Grant program and financing from AgCarolina Farm Credit, Neil launched Simply Natural Creamery.

The Creamery has become an Eastern North Carolina agri-tourist sensation, welcoming more than 75,000 visitors annually who come to enjoy freshly churned ice cream and admire the Jerseys grazing on the adjacent dairy farm. Customers visiting Simply Natural's ice cream parlor can watch through a wall-sized window as employees convert the Jerseys’ milk into ice cream, bottled milk, butter and other products in a gleaming facility. 

Today, the combined dairy and creamery operations employ 40 full- and part-time employees, including a number of Neil’s immediate and extended family members. The Creamery’s branded products, sold through retail outlets across eastern North Carolina, are a shining example of North Carolina’s blossoming local food movement.

When Joe and Annie Ritota of Annie’s Bakery first contacted NCIFund about a loan to expand, the organic artisan bakery’s 20 employees operated in a very cramped basement beneath their retail location in Sylva, North Carolina.

 With wholesale orders increasing, they needed more space, and more ovens, mixers and cooling racks.  NCIFund’s 2010 loan allowed Annie’s to upfit 21,000 square foot in a West Asheville business incubator, including the installation of a solar thermal system that heats thousands of gallons of water needed for processing and washing.

With the additional space, the bakery was able to operate much more efficiently and vastly increase production.  Today, Annie’s breads are served in 40 Asheville area restaurants and available in grocery stores and retail outlets throughout the Southeast.  A follow-on loan from NCIFund in 2017 funded the acquisition of additional equipment needed to keep up with demand.

The success of the business that began in Joe’s garage has allowed the company to grow full-time employment from 5 to 22 and increase the fringe benefits offered to employees.  The bakery is an important local food system linchpin, purchasing organic grain from North Carolina growers and increasing the supply of artisanal locally-produced baguettes, ciabatta, multi-grain loaves, and specialty breads.

Dee and Angie Cowger started The Custard Stand, a drive-up dairy bar, in their hometown of Webster Springs, West Virginia, in 1991. Within a few years, they realized their hot dog chili was something special, and with the help of Dee’s mother, in 2003, they began packaging and selling it, working out of a space “no bigger than a carwash bay,” Angie recalls. 

By 2006, sales had increased 12-fold, and the Cowgers needed more space. Their chili business was too young for a traditional bank, so they used loans from NCIFund and WV Rural Rehabilitation Fund to expand and build a warehouse.

In early 2002, the upstate New York corporate owner of a formerly family-owned sawmill in Richwood, West Virginia announced it was closing the mill due to insufficient profitability caused by the economic downturn of 2001.  Long-time employees Bill and Sharon Glasscock had other ideas; they knew the mill, which sells raw logs and green lumber, could operate profitably without the burden of corporate overhead. They were ready to invest their savings, but needed additional financing to purchase the mill and invest in a horizontal resaw that would increase profitability.

Their bank BB&T, the West Virginia Economic Development Authority and a local investor had confidence in the Glasscocks, but needed to know a re-start could really succeed financially. They turned to NCIFund for help, and we obtained a USDA Rural Development grant to hire an accountant to install a new accounting system and provide training for 6 months, so the mill could prepare financial statements useful for managing the mill.   “When you’re first starting out, it’s so helpful to have someone see your vision, someone you can trust,” recalls Sharon.

With a $1 million financing package in place – including $50,000 from NCIFund for working capital to buy log inventory -- the old Mullican mill was reborn as Laurel Creek Hardwoods, saving 22 jobs in Richwood, population 2,400.

Sixteen years later, the mill is still going strong, with higher sales.  Laurel Creek now employs 25, despite the Great Recession of 2007, which led to the loss of 4,400 jobs in WV’s forest products industry. “Typically when you add efficiency, it takes away jobs,” says Sharon, who still runs the company (Bill has retired).  “But because we’ve increased production, we’ve been able to add jobs.”  Due to higher transportation costs, the mill sells more products to West Virginia hardwood lumber companies than before, though it exports hardwood logs overseas.

Investments in equipment (the resaw, a new carriage, and a cant catcher) have been essential to its success, but Sharon is clear that the Laurel Creek “family, the guys, are the key to it all. Cold weather, hot weather, they still produce a great product.”  She’s especially proud that four of their original workers have been able to retire, and that the company’s now able to offer a matching 401(k) retirement plan.

What lies ahead?  More investments for efficiency and safety, says Sharon. “We have good workers here to fill the jobs. The mill is a community asset. It needs to stay a family business.”