The Hub of business in Carbon County

Carbon County has a new resource available for busineses in either the incubation stage or currently operating. The Business Innovation Hub of Carbon County, or "The Hub" is located at 116 4th Street in Rawlins.

On June 22, the office held a grand opening.

The mission of The Hub is to support Carbon County entrepreneurs by providing a connection point to education, tools and partners to help start and expand businesses in the community. The Hub is a cross functional environment which creates a safe shelter for new ideas.  It fosters individuals and groups to collaborate, develop and create opportunities to accelerate their ideas and business.

The Hub houses private and public educational and professional agencies which are there to stimulate economic development, information sharing and strengthen the entrepreneurial system in Carbon County.

At the open house, Pam Thayer, the Rawlins DDA/Main Street director since 2006, was very excited about the The Hub being in Carbon County.

"The Business Innovation Hub has been long coming in Carbon County," Thayer said. "The process to get help is fairly easy. You go online to http://www.ccwyohub.org and fill out the information sheet. Then, from there, you give us an idea if you are a start up, a current business or wanting to come to Carbon County."

She said this the connector moment of what the Hub does. Once the needs are realized, a partner in the Hub will start to help. The Rawlins Chamber of Commerce is located in the office. The Carbon County Economic Development Corporation is not housed in the office but is a steering committee partner. Another partner housed in the facility is the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (SBDC) which provides no cost, confidential training and one-on-one advising to help entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed.

Every state has an SBDC. This one receives funding from the University of Wyoming, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and the Wyoming Business Council.

Another partner at the Hub is IMPACT 307, previously known as the Wyoming Technology Business Center (WTBC).

WTBC was founded in 2005 when a group of forward-looking leaders at the University of Wyoming and across the state committed to create a resource to facilitate companies starting up and growing in Wyoming.

WTBC was formed with an original mission to operate in Laramie as a technology business incubator providing facilities, technical assistance and administrative support to new and developing small technology/innovation businesses.

A secondary purpose of WTBC was to promote social welfare through development of employment opportunities for Wyoming students and citizens, encouragement of industrial growth, especially that of technology-based businesses, and attraction of business organizations to the Laramie community.

As time passed the mission of the WTBC changed to help other areas of the state in the development of new products and economic development. The Laramie WTBC building opened in October 2006 with full occupancy. The WTBC subsequently took responsibility over operations of the Casper WTBC in Summer 2013 and Sheridan WTBC in early 2015. Under the new name of IMPACT 307, there is now a branch in Rawlins.

"This has taken a while to get all the right players together," Thayer said. "It has taken around six years for this to all come together the way you see it today."

The facility has two conference rooms and an e-commerce lab. The use of each is free. There is also a large scale printer for projects. Although it is not free, Thayer said the charges are only what it costs The Hub. There is no profit being made on using the printer.

"We want to be as user friendly to entrepreneurs as possible," Thayer said. "We want people who are starting a business (to see) the Hub is an extraordinary resource."

Meghan Kerley, who is running the IMPACT 307 office in Rawlins, agrees.

"We are launching IMPACT 307 Carbon County to be one of the resources to compliment our partners here in this office," Kerley said. "It is pretty exciting to see all this come together and know we are helping Carbon County grow businesses and projects the way we have at places in the state."

Fred Schmechel, interim director of Impact 307, said the groundwork Kerley laid earlier this year with all the other partners made it possible for IMPACT 307 to join this alliance to help businesses.

"We are here partly because of the footprint the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) has already established in Carbon County with the efforts of Jim Drever, the director for Albany and Carbon counties," Schmechel said. "It enabled us to come here and explore what can be done in Carbon County and use as a possible model across Wyomng."

Drever of the SBDC said the Hub is a cost-free one-stop shop for entrepreneurs.

"This is great for Carbon County," Drever said. "I hope the community here in Carbon County see we don't have overlapping services here, but also collaborative services."

The partners at the Business Innovation Hub are Wyoming SBDC, IMPACT 307, Rawlins Main Street, Rawlins Chamber of Commerce and supporting partners are the city of Rawlins, Wyoming Business Council, Carbon County Development Corporation, Carbon Carbon County Higher Education Center, Wyoming Afterschool Alliance and 71 Construction.

"This is such a great thing for Carbon County," Kerley said. "I look forward to people who want to start a business utilizing us."