At-Home Business Owner Seeks Incubator for Port Hueneme

Corinne Sharkey is determined to help fellow members of Port Hueneme’s home-based business community gain a greater presence in their city and a greater share of their respective markets.

The owner of her own at-home venture, a graphic design service, Sharkey is heading a campaign to establish Port Hueneme’s first incubator, which would allow home-based operations to remain small-scale while increasing visibility. Through the co-op, owners would share office space, equipment, a receptionist and other necessities, thereby keeping overhead low as they grew.

Sharkey, who is in the process of outlining the structure of the incubator, already has targeted some possible office rentals.

Now all she needs is about half a dozen tenants.

“We’ve got many ingredients already lined up very nicely, but we need businesses,” said Sharkey, chairwoman of the economic development committee of the Port Hueneme Chamber of Commerce and wife of City Councilman Jon Sharkey.

“There are a lot of home-based businesses out there,” she said. “We are looking for basically any business that is up to capacity in their home and realize the next logical move is to move out of the home.”

As she expands her search for participants, Sharkey said she expects to find a number of home-based business owners who are struggling and would like a change of scenery and strategy.

“We would probably encounter businesses that are having financial problems and are hoping the increased visibility of an incubator would solve them,” she said. “Some businesses are at home because they want to be; others are there because they have to be and are just waiting for the opportunity to get out.”

An analysis by an independent consultant several years ago indicated that Port Hueneme would be well suited to home-based business development, Sharkey said.

“That’s because Port Hueneme is a small town, we are largely built up and home-based businesses are fabulous for a community with an excellent lifestyle and low crime that’s a little bit out of the way,” she said.

Sharkey said the incubator not only has the potential to help entrepreneurs but also should boost the Port Hueneme economy.

“I think it’s going to add a lot of prosperity,” she said. “Clients would have an easier time accessing these businesses. It would give them the advantages of a storefront window.”

Joseph Huggins, president of Gold Coast Small Business Development Center, has worked with Sharkey on her project. He said Port Hueneme’s business community needs to do something to help it out of the shadow of the larger retail markets of Oxnard and Ventura.

“They need to distinguish themselves. The incubator is one way to focus their efforts,” he said. “It’s just one activity to try to help turn the community around.”

In her Chamber of Commerce capacity, Sharkey also has plans to step up an outreach program by going door to door to see how individual business owners are faring. In addition, she is trying to help Port Hueneme businesses procure more military contracts from the neighboring Naval base.

At the same time, the chamber’s economic development committee is setting up a revolving loan program in which the city of Port Hueneme would provide funds to local businesses. The chamber would screen the applicants.

The loans, Sharkey said, would tie in with the incubator.

“So often a business making the transition from the home to a facility is going to have some start-up costs that are higher than [normal],” she said.

Don Cozza, co-owner of Ace Design, a Port Hueneme graphic design and image consulting firm, has discussed the incubator with Sharkey. He said it would have its benefits but that he was unsure whether he would offer his company as a founding tenant.

“I think that it could help us grow, but there are things that are attractive about operating from home that, when you go to an incubator, you leave,” said Cozza, who operates Ace Design with Nancy Shelton, his fiance. “At home you have the freedom of working your own hours, doing things around the house and raising your children.”