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E4E News & Events
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Winter Marketplace & Micro-Business Showcase Event --
Tuesday, December 1, 5:00 - 7:15 pm
at the Heritage Room, 604 Water Street, downtown Olympia.
Come and do your holiday shopping! |
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Orientations --
November 9
These one-hour sessions are free and provide background information about E4E's training program and entrepreneurial support services. People interested in attending can register online. |
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Business Readiness Workshops --
November 20
These 6-hour classes are an essential next step after our Orientation. |
Related Info:
Contact:
Bicycle Records
(360) 753-0988
ross@bicyclerecords.com
Bicycle Records website
Bicycle Records's page in E4E's Business Directory
E4E's Business Directory main page
Previous issues of E-Ventures
Enterprise for Equity home page
Forward this newsletter to a friend!
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Entrepreneur of the Month
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Bob Schwenkler and Ross Cowman.
They own a record label.
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Bicycle Records
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Olympia is an incubator and exporter of DIY music culture, a place where musicians do big things on small budgets, recording themselves, passing the hat, touring from living room to living room, up and down the coast, sometimes sleeping on the same floor they had performed on. They do it for the love, but thanks to Bicycle Records, musicians are getting checks instead of spare change. As do-it-yourself musicians, Bob Schwenkler and Ross Cowman fell in love with the Olympia music scene. They performed, toured, and hung out with hundreds of musicians from Olympia and around the world, seeing first-hand how musicians are an undervalued, yet vital, community-building force.
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Bicycle Records artists,
Polka Dot Dot Dot.
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Bicycle Records, the label that Ross and Bob own and operate, records and distributes musicians from across the globe. Their beautiful, hand-letterpressed packages cradle CDs, vinyl, sincere lyricism, energetic performers, and a sound you might call “folktronic.” It repays musicians for their dedication and contribution to the community. Instead of earning about a dollar for a ten dollar CD, a Bicycle Records artist takes home five to seven bucks! When Bob asked Ross to become his business partner, neither of them knew much about running a record label. They learned fast, but their learning curve skyrocketed when they enrolled in Enterprise for Equity's Business Training Program. “Without Enterprise for Equity we would never have thought of creating a poll, interviewing retailers, studying the competition... when we presented ourselves as professionals, we were treated like professionals.”~ Bob Schwenkler and Ross Cowman
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A Bicycle Record -
local artist Jenny Jenkins.
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With some guidance and encouragement from Enterprise for Equity, Ross and Bob created a catalog, streamlined their online presence, created a custom inventory database, began selling to retailers, scaled up production, and grasped what it meant to be sustainable. Bicycle Records is a micro-enterprise ideal, creating sustainable careers in place of passing the hat, supporting musicians who, in turn, knit the community together and provide us with their art.
Enterprise for Equity is a community supported nonprofit that
helps people with limited incomes start and sustain small businesses.
We grow entrepreneurs! Enterprise for Equity is an equal opportunity provider.
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