An Inland Empire for Latino Success

Latino-owned businesses are sprouting faster in the Inland Empire than anywhere in the Los Angeles Basin. Larry Barrios and Jesus Cardenas help explain why.

Sick of steep rents in Industry, Barrios scoured the Southland for manufacturing space in 1991 and landed in Chino, where property was cheap and freeways close by. To his surprise, workers from his West Coast Samples Inc. followed, giving up cramped San Gabriel Valley quarters to buy first homes in Fontana, Ontario and Pomona.

Cardenas, meanwhile, immigrated from rural Jalisco, in Mexico, settling in Corona with his wife, Luz, to milk cows for wages and raise pigs at home. As the Mexican immigrant population exploded, Luz’s specialty pork cuts and homemade chorizo morphed into Cardenas Markets, a chain of stores in Ontario, Montclair, Moreno Valley and Pomona with $75 million in annual revenue.

The paths to success of the two companies underscore the double-barreled growth of the Inland Empire’s Latino community. Los Angeles-weary entrepreneurs and workers have pushed east in search of cheap real estate--Latinos among them--transforming the region into the decade’s leading job engine. Others have chosen the Inland Empire as a point of entry, enhancing its once-rural flavor with the cowboy hats and ranchera music of their Mexican pueblos and sustaining a distinct crop of businesses that cater to their tastes.

The Latino populations of Riverside and San Bernardino grew fastest of all Southland counties from 1990 to 1998, at 59% and 45% respectively, recent U.S. Census figures show. That far outpaced general population increases of 26% and 15%. Latinos now make up a third of the Inland Empire population, up from about 19% in 1980.

Latino enterprises, too, grew fastest there, by 124% and 125% in Riverside and San Bernardino counties from 1992 to 1998, a recent study by UCLA’s Center for the Study of Latino Health showed.

As the region takes stock of the change, businesses that have toiled in relative isolation are coming together to network, applaud their achievements and give back to the community. The Barrios and Cardenas companies were among 25 Latino enterprises honored at a recent event by Riverside-based Hispanic Lifestyle Magazine. The harried entrepreneurs that filled a DoubleTree Hotel banquet room in Ontario pulled in more than $640 million in annual revenues and employed more than 5,000 workers.

They ranged from Monica Garcia, whose Corona-based Complas Inc. will top $169 million in revenues this year offering telecommunications products and services to corporate clients like Southern California Edison and AT&T;, to Hemet-based hardware manufacturer Geometrical Structures Inc. with a more modest $500,000 in annual sales. Tortilla makers, furniture manufactures, real estate brokers, tax consultants and aerospace engineers filled out the list.

More than a dozen Latino chambers of commerce now serve the sprawling Inland Empire, about half of them formed in the past few years. And the region’s businesses--Latino and non-Latino alike--are increasingly courting Latino consumers. When Ramon Alvarez took over Riverside’s Lincoln Mercury dealership four years ago, he slapped his name on the sign and began a weekly Spanish-language radio show to draw immigrant customers.

Alvarez never missed a Saturday, even calling in to the program from the hospital on the day his baby was born. His outreach paid off: 500 potential shoppers crammed into Alvarez Lincoln Mercury for a Cinco de Mayo celebration this year, up from 50 last year. Latino customers account for a third of Alvarez’s average monthly sales.

“I knew there was a big Hispanic community and I wanted to put my name up there to attract that customer,” said Alvarez, president of the Greater Riverside Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which doubled its membership this year. “Sometimes you have the stigma of walking in 1/8to the dealership 3/8 with jeans. If you don’t look the part people don’t talk to you. I tried to break that barrier.”

As chamber president, Alvarez has focused on pitching the value of entrepreneurship to children in Riverside-area school districts that are as much as 70% Latino. Other chambers are cropping up in far-flung reaches of the region to do the same and to bring resources to information-starved small business owners.

In the past few months, new Latino chambers have sprouted in San Gorgonio and Temecula. The latter, the Southwest Riverside Chamber of Commerce, also serves the heavily Latino communities of Lake Elsinore and Hemet and is planning a Christmas giveaway for the area’s disadvantaged Latino families.

“We definitely felt a need. We’ve been seeing about 25% of the businesses in the area are either owned or managed by Hispanics,” said Colombia-born George Mesa, who launched the chamber three months ago with his Ecuadorian wife, Elena Viteri Mesa. The couple also publish Comunidad Al Dia, a monthly newspaper serving the area.

“The most important thing about this chamber is to help the small- to medium-sized businesses grow and to link them with corporate America,” Mesa said. “There are a lot of small Hispanic business owners who feel intimidated going to the large mixers.”

The business growth has been so notable that the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce plans to carve the Inland Empire out as a separate region with its own representation, said Alex Torres, president of the statewide organization and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of the Silicon Valley.

“Because of the explosive growth in the Inland Empire, their needs are not necessarily being met,” he said.

The state organization will also try to ensure that all the Inland Empire chambers are online and directing entrepreneurs to resources such as help with preparation of business plans, referrals to procurement opportunities and other resources.

To be sure, the area’s “great migration” is powered by trends that cross ethnic lines: the quest for cheaper land, room for expansion, lower-cost housing and easy freeway access, said San Bernardino economist John Husing.

“During the course of this decade the Inland Empire has added more jobs in absolute numbers than Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura and San Diego counties,” he said. “Space is a heck of a lot less expensive, and folks that get out here--particularly Hispanic businesses--would just find all the workers they could possibly want.”

The Latino community has ridden that wave as hundreds of manufacturers moved east. Barrios traded a rented 42,000-square-foot facility in Industry for his own 65,000-square-foot plant in Chino. His company, which manufactures store samples for home improvement products such as carpet, tile and drapes, posts $10 million in annual revenue and has opened a 24,000-square-foot distribution center in Chino and an assembly plant in Tecate, Mexico.

Garcia of Complas shopped around the Southland when she grew out of her Anaheim facility. Taking into account land values and the location of her work force, in 1992 she settled on Corona. She just purchased another 60,000-square-foot facility and plans to acquire an additional 16 acres. Complas provides copper and fiber optic cable and other telecommunications products and services. It has facilities in San Diego, Tracy, Dallas, Houston and South Bend, Ind.

While Complas serves major corporate clients, other Latino-owned enterprises have sprung up to cater to customers putting down roots in the area. Brothers Alex, Jimmy and Alfonso Espinoza operate a real estate sales business and escrow company. When he realized clients had nowhere to turn for financing, Alex Espinoza launched California Capital, a mortgage banker in Ontario that also specializes in the Latino market.

The Cardenas family, too, expanded its empire as the region’s Latino immigrant community burgeoned. The day the family opened its first Ontario market in 1981, they sold $37 in merchandise. By the time the third Ontario store opened in 1996, first day sales topped $13,000.

Today, other independent supermarkets are making an aggressive run at the Latino market, said Jose Cardenas, 30. But the family’s knowledge of the customer is keeping the company healthy. The Moreno Valley store will double in size at a new location, and the family plans to expand to Rialto.

Added Alvarez: “We have room to grow here. All we’ve got between us and the Arizona border is dirt. It really is exciting times.”