Revving up business for a quarter century

The Business Incubator Center is celebrating its 25th anniversary of serving western Colorado small businesses.

Those 25 years have been full of success.

Through a collaborative effort with the community, the Incubator provides the training wheels for entrepreneurs trying to get up and running.

They have an 80-percent success rate.

More than 260 companies have been launched in their history, including nine in the last 2 years, those small businesses have added up to over one-thousand jobs.

The organization was recognized as one of the 50 best incubator entrepreneurial business supports in the world, and has also received the association's Incubator of the Year award.

"You know it's really interesting,...this place started in the 80s after the big oil field crash," explained Executive Director John Maraschin, "A lot of the city leaders got together to figure out what they heck they were going to do to get out of this, and so in 1985 they started really kicking the tires. '86 they got this group together, got their 501c3, and then in July of '87 on 3rd and Main they launched the Business Incubator."

Maraschin says there's an 80-percent failure rate for small businesses who don't use an incubator.

They say the best thing you can do is ask for help and that's why they're reminding entrepreneurs that the incubator is here.