BizNews FEATURE Monica Semington, owner of Monash Natural Blends, works with a client.
Hispanic Collaborative’s mercadoMKE bridges digital divide for small businesses By Sophie Bolich, for BizTimes IF YOU ASSUME the COVID-19 pandemic was tough for every entrepreneur, Monica Semington is at least one business owner who proves that presumption wrong. Even on a fuzzy Zoom interview, her face lights up when reflecting on the past year for Monash Natural Blends, her essential oil business. During the pandemic, several Milwaukee organizations have redoubled efforts to support Latino-owned small businesses and improve the city’s overall climate for Latino, immigrant and migrant communities. For Semington, the extra support has breathed new life into her business and given her more direction for where she wants to take it. Semington started Monash in 2018 on Cesar E. Chavez Drive as part of the Pop-Up MKE initiative; before that she had been sell12 / BizTimes Milwaukee MAY 24, 2021
ing products at farmers markets around the county. She later moved the business to Grand Avenue in Waukesha, where she continued to sell product until March 2020 when the pandemic forced her to close shop. At that point, Semington struggled with doubts about her business. “Before the pandemic, I didn’t have a business plan, I didn’t have any guidance,” she said. “I always had all these ideas, but it was too much, and I was not really focusing on anything.” With the grants she received during the pandemic, including Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.’s We’re All In and federal Paycheck Protection Program funds, Semington realized that she needed to strategize and use the money wisely if she wanted to save her business. She decided to sign up for a rebranding class
and connected with her business mentors, branding consultant Jay Olson. Various exercises helped her realize that her motivation as an entrepreneur stems from the desire to connect with people. “I started my company Monash Natural Blends because I love making meaningful connections so my clients feel nurtured, loved and empowered,” Semington said. “That’s my ‘why.’” “This changed everything,” she added. “Because this is not just a sales pitch, this is really drawn from my life and what is really important to me.” Semington also credits her other mentor, Athena Agoudemos, a business consultant at the Small Business Development Center. Along with a shifting business plan, Semington needed a new logo and a professional website, two daunting tasks for many small business owners. In fact, a 2020
survey by the Milwaukee-based Hispanic Collaborative of over 1,000 businesses and households found that more than 60% of small, Latino-owned businesses do not have a website, and more than 85% of them do not have e-commerce capabilities. In response, the Hispanic Collaborative launched mercadoMKE, a nonprofit online marketplace that helps Latino-owned businesses with marketing, website design, financial literacy and e-commerce. mercadoMKE provides these services for free to businesses. During the COVID-19 pandemic, having a functional online presence was enough to make or break a business. Laura Hernandez, operations lead and account coordinator for mercadoMKE, said that while many younger people view online shopping as second nature, older generations may not be as familiar with the technology. mercadoMKE’s role is to help build businesses that may not have the money to spend on an IT or marketing person, she said. Many businesses seeking mercadoMKE’s services don’t have logos or pictures of their product, and owners often tell Laura Hernandez that they looked into websites but felt overwhelmed by the cost and lack of guidance. “Some businesses were able to adapt quickly to online ordering and pickup,” she said. “But small businesses – Latino-owned businesses – some of them just didn’t know where to get started or how to do this. Basically, what we’re doing is we’re stepping in and kind of bridging that gap.” Nancy Hernandez started her own marketing firm, ABRAZO, in 2001 and said her experience helps her understand the needs and priorities of other business owners. “We’re not the ones that are doing the work,” said Nancy Hernandez, who is also the president
