TORRANCE TRIBUNE December 18, 2014 Page 3 Heidi Butzine Advocates Support of Small Business By Laura Sorensen Sometimes it’s nice to be able to do work in a coffee shop, especially one with comfortable couches and book-filled corners like Catalina Coffee in Redondo Beach. Catalina has a laidback vibe for a coffee shop; people are reading quietly in the corners and a mom lets her kids color on a low table across from me. There’s no annoying holiday music, or at least it’s not up loud enough to drill into one’s eardrums. It’s no accident that I have arranged to meet Heidi Butzine at Catalina, which is a proud local Redondo institution. Butzine, a collected and articulate, and very friendly interviewee, who brought her formal “office suit coat” but never had to put it on, has made a career from supporting local business. Her articulate and intelligent look at consumers and their spending habits has coalesced into a book called “Shop Local: A Practical Pain- Free Guide to Shopping with Purpose.” Hey, just in time for the holidays. Butzine hopes to nudge the consumer towards mindfulness when shopping, and help him or her make a decision Heidi Butzine - entrepreneur, wine enthusiast, local business supporter, and founder of ShopLocal.us. Photo courtesy of Heidi Butzine. that takes the local business into account. Butzine is a child of the South Bay who grew up in Torrance and Lomita and whose first job was at Del Amo mall. In high school she loved to write, but her passion was always geared towards business: she wanted to be the woman with the big office high in the shiny tower. She wanted an office of her own, like the one her great-grandmother had when she worked for many years in the aerospace industry, or like the one where she visited her father. She enrolled in Harbor College, at the same time as she got a full-time job working as a copy-girl in the mailroom at a small nonprofit. “Paying for your own school helps you realize the importance of your own education,” she notes, and she lived by her own maxim, using her money to pay for her tuition while she lived at home and worked her way up from the mailroom. And here is where it gets intriguing. The nonprofit company took a chance on Butzine, who considered herself a shy girl and was the youngest person at the nonprofit by many years, giving her the responsibility of helping to organize public meetings and seminars for important clients of all types. At Harbor College, she switched her major from business to communications with an emphasis on PR. She would go from the academic environment, learning about public relations strategies, and put them directly into use when meeting clients and organizing the events at the nonprofit. It was like going to two colleges at once, honing her interpersonal skills and communicating with construction workers and CEOs, and the combination made her indispensible to her employers. “I’ve been able to put that to work,” she says modestly. “That” has become her most valuable asset, and she also realized that the CEO in the office tower was not really her style after all. Instead, she wanted to work where she could meet and interact with lots of people. At her next job, which she acquired through her contacts at the nonprofit, she was promoted to VP of operations, and then at the same time went and put herself through the executive MBA program at UCLA. She and her mentor formed a residential risk consultancy business that dealt with “just about every home builder in the country” until the recession. That position took ideas from all her former jobs and synthesized them into such a lucrative business that they were bought out in 2007, just in time for the recession to hit. Butzine, who was transitioning away from that business, had to watch as many of her former employees were laid off. “Ultimately,” she said, “I had to let myself go.” She closed the door on that job and took a break in Italy. It would be another entire article to talk about Butzine and Italy. She has an abiding passion for wine and winemaking – and another side business certifying students who want to learn about wine – and she has taken the Culinary Institute of America wine program. In Italy she followed a tour bus around and learned that “wine comes from the same area wehre the food is grown, where the mushrooms came from. . . .” In other words, Italians like to shop local. Butzine came back to California with more information about wine and wrote articles for Napa-area wineries. She likes to tell the story that when she spoke to local winemakers up North, they would say, “If our neighbors fail, then we fail as well.” Meaning, communities have to band together to save one anothers’ businesses, even if they are competitors. If businesses feel responsible for each others’ successes, and if consumers realize that and spend their money at local businesses, local economy will begin to boom and “support and save what makes our communities unique and different,” says Butzine. This idea became the seed for her next venture, ShopLocal.us. ShopLocal.us is a type of glue that binds local small businesses together. Butzine wants to give businesses a chance to interact with one another, and to become more visible to the type of customer looking to support them. Then it’s easy for consumers to access local business and be confident that their money is well spent and is headed back into the community rather than being funneled away to corporate headquarters. Butzine has begun to certify businesses in the South Bay area that want to be recognized as local, and consumers can use an app to target these businesses. “The point is to spend money in your community, because it comes back to you,” she says, as the businesses support schools, little league teams, and other services. Butzine hasn’t stopped at the South Bay, though: she wants to take ShopLocal to a national level. California has long had a pro-small-business mentality, but many other U.S. cities have more of a “shop big-box for everything” habit. Butzine wants to change that by training others with a passion for the shop-local ideal to connect with small business owners, raise visibility, and work with citizens to promote mindfulness while spending and awareness of what small businesses are found Business Briefs Serving Sick and Homeless Children Children In Hospice Centers Children Awaiting Treatments for Life Threatening Diseases www.mmbha.webs.com See Women at Work, page 9 It’s Time. Equal Pay for Equal Work. This is the personal opinion of Heidi Maerker Go Continental for the Holidays Family-owned and operated Continental Gourmet Market is known for their empanadas (perfect for potluck parties too) and will also be featuring specialty wines, cheeses, fresh-baked breads, festive cookies and pastries for the holidays. There are two locations – one in Hawthorne at 12921 S. Prairie Avenue, (310) 676-5444 and the other in Lomita at 25600 Narbonne Avenue, (310) 530-3213. Catering is available and online ordering at www.continentalgourmetmarket.com. Continental Gourmet Market Founder and Family Patriarch Roberto Mortara (right) is pictured with his son Sergio Mortara and daughter-in-law Sandy Mortara who now run the day to day operations of the two stores, along with Continental’s next generation Robbie (3) and Abbie (1-1/2). Photo provided by Sergio Mortara. First Bank Opens New Torrance Location First Bank held a festive grand opening and ribbon cutting to celebrate their new branch in Torrance, located at 21705 Hawthorne Blvd. Guests included Torrance Mayor Patrick J. Furey and Council Members Geoff Rizzo and Mike Griffiths who mingled with Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce and First Bank management and staff. Special check presentations were also made by First Bank to the Switzer Learning Center and Boys and Girls Club of South Bay. First Bank Branch Manager Yalda Noorzai (holding certificate) is surrounded by (L to R) First Bank CA Retail Manager Steve Fiata, Torrance Council Member Geoff Rizzo, First Bank Regional Manager Jane Lief, Torrance Mayor Patrick J. Furey and Torrance Council Member Mike Griffiths. First Bank’s Doris Walker and Yalda Noorzai (holding scissors) get ready to cut the grand opening ribbon at their new branch in Torrance, located at 21705 Hawthorne Blvd., (310) 214-2950. See Business Briefs, page 9
Torrance_121814_FNL_lorez
To see the actual publication please follow the link above