Specialty Painter’s Business Picture is Brighter Thanks to Creativity and UCEDC Loan

 When times get tough, the tough get creative. 

For Stacey Guggenheim creative not only describes her business, SG Decorative Painting in Monmouth Beach, but her attitude as well. 

Guggenheim has been a client of UCEDC twice in her business career. She first started her decorative painting business, specializing in faux finishes, murals and custom designs, in 2003. A 2005 loan from UCEDC helped her out, but in 2008 she took a job as design director for a children's clothing company. By 2010, she was back in her own business and working with UCEDC again. 

Her first partnership with UCEDC helped her identify what she needed to do to be successful in business. "There's a difference between having a business and actually being profitable at it," Guggenheim says.  

The initial $10,000 loan helped her to buy some equipment and also take a class in Venetian Plaster that set her apart her competitors. 

The Social Network

This time around she's added some new skills as well: social media and marketing. "A lot of people who do what I do think their talent will be enough to get them through, and it really isn't." 

When she decided to get back into her own business in 2010, she started thinking about what things were different now than when she was in business previously. What she identified was the world of opportunity, connections and collaboration opened up by social media. 

SG Decorative Painting has a Facebook page, puts videos up on YouTube and uses Google to advertise. Through social media she is growing her 'fan base' and using her friends and 'friends of friends' to spread the word about her work. Her growing facility with social media has also help open another business path: marketing.

 "I feel so passionately that every business owner needs to be using social media, that I am launching a second business in social media," Guggenheim says, and launched Media Fly Marketing on Facebook this summer. “It's not a big reach or demarcation, says Guggenheim. "All the investments I made in the design business will roll into this endeavor."

Many of those investments were made possible by her two loans from UCEDC. "Ellen McHenry (senior director of financial programs) was really helpful in putting together a business plan and figuring out how to go about restarting the same business," she recalls.

"Working with them is a great experience. They helped me do the books, gave advice on bidding on contracts, and they have a great network."

The marketing business is only one way that Guggenehim has answered the question: 'How do I survive in a tough economy?'

Other answers are offering less expensive design services geared to the middle class. "Middle class families have less money to spend and are just trying to think creatively to spend less but still improve their home."

Guggenheim has also partnered with several businesses and executed designs for them in exchange for the opportunity to display her work at their locations.

"You've got to be as creative as you can."