GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – A business and manufacturing center for small businesses in Green Bay has been making quite the economic impact.
The Advance Business and Manufacturing Center incubator is the economic development arm of the Greater Green Bay Chamber.
Their goal is to provide start-up businesses the resources they need to get off the ground.
“The goal of the incubator is to provide a connecting place for entrepreneurs to partner resources and to assist them in their startup,” says Kelly Armstrong, Vice President of Economic Development with the Greater Green Bay Chamber.
Some of those resources are as basic as physical space for start-up businesses to operate in.
Other resources include providing invaluable experience.
“An incubator is supposed to be more than just physical space,” she says. “There’s mentoring, it’s the connecting with other entrepreneurs, it’s access to the resources.”
Armstrong says technical training is provided by their partners, which include the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College Small Business Initiative & Entrepreneur Resource Center, Wisconsin Small Business Development Center at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and SCORE Chapter 508.
The component of this center that sets it apart from the rest is the manufacturing opportunities it provides.
“That person that might be tinkering in their garage this is a perfect opportunity for them to move that manufacturing component into an actual manufacturing space,” explains Armstrong.
Most start-up businesses will utilize the center for a couple of years, but the ultimate sign of success is when they take off.
“The idea is that they would grow and graduate out,” she says. “Grow their business enough that they would then go out and get space out in the general community.”
And there have been plenty of successful businesses that have grown out of the incubator. The Greater Green Bay Chamber lists that 268 graduates have passed through the center and they have 56 current clients.
The combined cumulative economic impact of those businesses equates to more than $87 million for the area.
And they’re still growing. Officials are reporting that the center’s impact increased year-to-year more than $2 million this past year.