Defense Contracts Sustaining Small Businesses

March 23, 2010: Bill Crowe spoke to the club about gaining traction in small business during the current recession. Bill gained valuable experience spending several years running his own company, Aerotech, and in 1998 he retired and went to work for an IT company in Virginia. Recently Bill, accepted a position as the Vice President for the South East Region of the Copper River Native Association, an Alaska Native Corporation. Bill’s remarks focused on the utilization of government contracts as a stable source of income for small to medium sized businesses, his theories are based on the thoughts that follow.

In the tri-county area, Spawar, The Naval Weapons Station and the Air Force Base there are between six and eight billion dollars worth of defense contracts available to sustain local businesses and our economy by providing valuable jobs to our citizens. To illustrate this impact Bill shared this observation “North East Virginia is the hub of defense contracting and the employment rate in that area is less than 1%” this is a powerful statistic in this current recession.
Because 85% of small businesses fail within the first five years of opening, and bank financing is slim and private funding is expensive, Bill points out that consistent contracts are a way for small local companies to “gain traction”. In recent years there has been a noticeable shift in the thinking of contracting officers, as they realize that small businesses can team up with large corporation to fulfill their needs, and the agency works towards its quota to small disadvantaged businesses. There are additional benefits for companies denoted as service disabled veteran owned companies, and Alaskan Native Corporations.

In summary Bill stated the government is going to be the meal ticket as the country continues climbing out of this recession, and businesses in the lowcountry may as well take advantage.

Reported by: Elizabeth Wooten Burwell, Keyway Committee Chair