Success Story: Maurice Brewster — Mosaic Global Transportation
Maurice Brewster built his transportation company into an elite transit provider thanks to a small business loan from Opportunity Fund. Mosaic Global Transportation is on the road to bigger and better things.
Our customers inspire us every day, and we want to regularly share those stories to inspire you, too. This week, read about Maurice Brewster of Mosaic Global Transportation in Redwood City. If you’re an African-American entrepreneur, you know how hard it is to get the capital to grow your business. That’s why you need to know about Maurice.
Driven to Expand
According to a Wall Street Journal article that appeared in March of 2014, the rebound in federal small business lending, the first such rebound since the financial crisis, has largely passed black entrepreneurs by. Two years after that article was written, things haven’t improved very much. More than six years after the financial crisis, African-Americans have suffered the largest decline in SBA funding and are still looking for loans to help them stave off deeper financial hardship. Maurice Brewster was one of them.
His company, Mosaic Global Transportation, a limousine, sedan, and shuttle business located in Redwood City, California was stagnating because of a lack of financing. Although the 12-year-old company had 44 employees and was providing transportation to corporate clients in more than 450 cities, the business could be doing much better with the capital to expand.
“Initially, I was putting all the profits back into the business,” Maurice said of his decision to bootstrap the company, a common small business strategy. He managed to create a little breathing room and his company started turning a profit again in April 2013. With sufficient funding, Maurice thought the company could “double in size in a year or two.” But in December of 2015, Maurice’s application for a $250,000 loan was rejected by his bank, citing insufficient collateral and no profits for several years.
A Fresh Perspective
Opportunity Fund looks at lending in general — and Maurice specifically — a little differently. So they started Maurice with a small $15,000 to get his credit history established and jump start the business. Maurice did the rest. During Super Bowl 50, his company was named the Official Transportation Provider for the Host Committee. He has also expanded his employee shuttle service at Google.
From Opportunity Fund’s perspective, Maurice already had established a profitable business with collateral “on wheels” for the loan. And he proved us right, as have so many of our loan recipients. Which just goes to show, when you invest in good people, there’s no telling where they can go.
This article originally appeared on the Opportunity Fund Small Business blog at opportunityfundloan.org.
We hope this story has inspired you, too. At Opportunity Fund, we offer easy-to-get, fast, and affordable small business loans to help small business owners succeed. Visit our home page to find out more.
Opportunity Fund is California’s largest and fastest-growing nonprofit lender to small businesses. In fiscal year ’16, we made $60M in loans to help more than 2,200 small business owners who do not have access to traditional financing. As a founding member and signatory to the Borrower’s Bill of Rights, we believe in the important role small businesses play in our community and the economy, and we aim to help owners financially succeed.
