The subsequent 10 weeks of laborious work and homework will probably be tough nevertheless it’s price it to assist construct your enterprise and maintain it long-term. Lenhart speaks from expertise. She received the $10,000 second-place prize on the inaugural cohort’s pitch evening in December 2023.
The second cohort’s numerous combine of companies reveals tourism’s wide-ranging influence on the native economic system.
There are seashore companies like a pair of firms providing watersports leases and boat tour charters – ClearWake Watersports on Clearwater Seashore and Wakesurf Tampa, which has Clearwater Seashore, Tampa and Lake Tarpon areas.
I Love Clearwater is a web site and weblog that markets and promotes native companies and locations.
Way2GoRides is a transportation service providing rides to the airport, Clearwater Seashore, an evening out or the every day commute. It’s additionally has branched out into advertising via wrap adverts on its fleet of automobiles and on-board movies. AMPLIFY Clearwater President and CEO Amanda Payne describes Way2Go proprietor Jasper Klein as a “serial entrepreneur.”
“He’s a powerful, homegrown entrepreneur that we hope will proceed to achieve success,” she says.
The tourism incubator additionally has its first enterprise from the North Greenwood group, a deliberate wine bar known as Wine Down Blue.
“Coming quickly to North Greenwood, Wine Down Blue is a novel and fashionable tackle conventional wine bars,” the house owners say in a written description for AMPLIFY Clearwater. “Whereas there are different wine bars within the space, none provide the mixture of wine slushies, dwell music occasions, and a various choice of wines and charcuterie boards that we do. By offering high-quality and numerous choices, we intention to face out from our rivals and appeal to a loyal buyer base.”
Baez Household Enterprise has a number of companies alongside Clearwater’s Cleveland Road hall, together with Senor Bubbles, a laundry service for business and particular person prospects, and Senor Subs and Gyros.
Ryan Jesi, who owns Jet’s Pizza franchise areas in Clearwater, Largo and Dunedin, is a part of the cohort, with a concentrate on the restaurant’s Gulf to Bay Boulevard location.
Downtown Tampa-based BayWest Digital is a digital advertising and options agency that’s launched SalonX, a service custom-designed for luxurious salons. St. Petersburg’s Road Stage One creates street-level digital advertising hubs, together with interactive touchscreen adverts for storefront home windows. Largo’s Model Metropolis Music offers audio and video providers and options for company occasions.
“There’s plenty of pleasure across the second cohort,” Payne says. “ I used to be more than happy as a result of we’ve a various group of businesses- numerous in location, numerous in kind of enterprise and numerous of their backgrounds as effectively,” Payne says. “I used to be actually excited to see the areas of city we pulled from. We’ve the North Greenwood group represented on this cohort and the Tampa Bay space at massive. It’s what we hoped to construct and it’s thrilling to see it coming to fruition.”
AMPLIFY Clearwater Chief of Employees Joe Lugo, who joined the group throughout final yr’s cohort and has many years {of professional} expertise in small enterprise consulting, runs the tourism incubator program.
“I believe we’ve acquired the appropriate individual in the appropriate seat to do one of the best job,” Payne says. “It is going to be thrilling to see the place it goes.”
Shifting ahead, Payne says AMPLIFY Clearwater desires the incubator program to draw some companies from different areas of Florida and the nation with the financial improvement objective of some transferring or increasing to Clearwater.
For extra data, go to AMPLIFY Clearwater Tourism Enterprise Innovation Incubator.
This story is produced via an underwriting settlement between AMPLIFY Clearwater and 83 Levels Media to highlight entrepreneurship, small enterprise success tales and packages that assist companies thrive.
