SIRTI (Spokane) eyes business loan fund

Purchase-order financing would help young companies fill big contracts, grow

By Megan Cooley Spokane Journal of Business

The Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute is working on a program that would help fledgling companies fill orders larger than they have the cash flow to handle, enabling them to grow.

Patrick Tam, SIRTI’s executive director, announced at the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Business Connections Breakfast last week that SIRTI “is close to developing a technology-growth fund, where we finance purchase orders to help companies fill orders.”

Tam told the audience the program would help young and growing businesses that often must turn away large orders for their products because they don’t have the manpower or the resources to fill the requests.

“It’s a good problem for companies to have,” he said.

Asked later about the envisioned program, Tam declined to elaborate on how the fund would work or who could tap into it.

“It’s very preliminary at this stage,” he said. “What we recognize is that there’s a need for this type of funding, so we hope to put something together to fulfill that need.”

Tam said that money hasn’t been raised or earmarked yet for the fund, and SIRTI doesn’t know yet from where the funds would come.

Tam said SIRTI also hasn’t determined which companies could apply for the loans, identifying the potential recipients only as businesses that “have needs to finance short-term working capital.”

http://spokanejournal.com/spokane_id=article&sub=1597