It is with great pleasure that I share this guest post by James Yoakum, the owner and founder of Cooper River Distillers:

Via the Cooper River Distillers website.

I recently started a small business in downtown Camden called Cooper River Distillers. We’re just the second licensed and operating distillery in the entire state of New Jersey and my goal is to craft traditional spirits like rum, bourbon, and brandy with unique twists that make them different from anything you can get anywhere else in the world. 

During the two year process of getting this business from the idea stage to reality I faced many of the obstacles and road-blocks common to any new business, as well as plenty of challenges unique to the nascent craft-distilling industry. However, after working through all the red-tape I’m happy to officially join the community of small businesses here in the city of Camden. 

As one of the newest members of the Camden business community I wanted to share a few of my early thoughts on how small businesses can play a pivotal part in making Camden a better place to live, work, play, and learn. I look forward to hearing from other business owners and community members about other ways that we can all work together towards our common goals.

• Small businesses attract more businesses! Since opening Cooper River Distillers I have had numerous conversations with other entrepreneurs considering opening up shop in Camden, and I’ve come to realize how important it is to reach a critical mass of small businesses in a city like Camden. The more small businesses choose to locate here, the more attractive it will look to other small businesses and the more ‘buzz’ will be generated around why everyone is setting-up-shop in Camden.

  Additionally, as local entrepreneurs see success they tend to pay it forward by investing time, energy, and money in other new businesses. Successful local entrepreneurs can also help to reduce some of the headaches and red-tape associated with opening a business for those who come behind them. For example, the next craft distillery that tries to open in our area will have an easier time than I did because of the groundwork I did in educating local officials and testing out the licensing and permitting processes at various levels.

• Small businesses bring creative, passionate people to town! It takes a certain type of person to start a new business – a type of creative, passionate person that becomes an asset to their community wherever they are. Camden can use all the passionate, creative people it can get and any small businesses that come to town will bring those types of people with them.
• Small businesses interact with the community on a personal level! Small businesses become part of the community fabric in a place like Camden – supporting local causes and collaborating with other community members. The business community here is a lot like a small town where everyone knows each other and is excited to work together for the common good. For example, I collaborated with the Camden’s Children’s Garden to test how my spent whiskey grains work as compost for their gardens – we’ll see how that works out in a few months.
• Small businesses create jobs! This is the first thing many people think of when they think of the benefits of new businesses coming to a city like Camden, but I’m putting it last on my list. While new jobs are clearly an amazing benefit of new businesses, I think if you’re just looking to create jobs quickly, that is best accomplished by attracting medium- or large-sized businesses that can hire dozens of people at once and have systems in place for training and developing those employees.

  The job creation that accompanies small businesses is different – it’s smaller-in-scale and happens more slowly, but it is an important benefit of small business growth nonetheless. When small businesses do hire people those employees are often entrepreneurial in nature and eventually go on to start their own businesses, leading to a virtuous cycle. Small businesses also ask a lot of their employees – leading these employees to grow quickly and develop broad knowledge about many areas of running a business from top-to-bottom.

So, those are some of my thoughts on how and why small businesses can and should be a big, positive part of Camden’s future. I’m happy to continue the conversation, you can reach me at James@CooperRiverDistillers.com or via Twitter (@NJDistiller).

Cheers!
James Yoakum

Founder & Chief Distiller – Cooper River Distillers

Tags: cooper river distillery