For the better part of a decade, Vamos Marketing was everything Frank Garza hoped it would be.
He'd started small, in 2003, launching his fledgling promotional products firm shortly after completing a dual undergraduate-graduate degree program at the University of Texas. As he cobbled together an increasingly diverse list of clients around Central Texas, his business started rolling. He brought on a full-time employee, freeing him up to focus on clients.
He started to think about building a sales force, too, but ultimately decided against it.
"I was content with where I was at," Garza said.
But that changed last year. With Vamos approaching its 10th year in business — and now generating about a half-million dollars in annual sales — Garza has started to think about what the company could become. He wants to add a new division or two, bring on more employees and put processes in place that would help build the value of his business in case he ever decides to sell it.
"I'm hitting 10 years (and) I have a good reputation in town," he said from his office in Southeast Austin. "So if there's a good opportunity to try to grow it, it's now."
As the Texas and Austin populations skew increasingly Hispanic during the next several decades, the growth of Vamos Marketing and the thousands of other Hispanic-owned businesses here and around the state could become an increasingly vital source of new jobs and income — both for the Hispanic community and for the economy at large. READ MORE
