Lorenzo Abella had a plan last week when he walked into a summit at Best Western designed to help small business survive and thrive.

He was going to stay for one of the scheduled three hours. If he didn’t learn anything, “I would politely leave,” said the part-owner of Pane e Vino Ristorante in Lorton.

Abella stayed for three hours and then some at the Southeast Fairfax Development Corporation’s first economic summit appropriately called “Surviving and Thriving in Today’s Economy.”

Five representatives from local, state, and federal agencies ranging from the Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber of Commerce to the Small Business Administration told 115 business owners how they can help their small business and noted economist Dr. Stephen Fuller told them what to expect economically now and in the future.

“The worst is over,” Fuller said. “2009 was the worst year of this current business cycle. The economic environment is improving, but it will be a long haul before we feel good,” he said.

Fuller likened 2009 as one of the worst economic years since the Great Depression. Retail businesses will feel a recovering a little more slowly because they’re more impacted by unemployment, he said. They have to wait until growth occurs and more disposable income is generated.

The 69-year-old economist predicted that “2010 will be better than 2009 and 2011 will be better than 2010. Early 2011 we will have replaced everything we lost and 2011-12 will look like a normal year.”

Among other illustrations, Fuller credits Enron, Madoff, and greed as the culprits in the downfall in the economy. “Greed took over and people took more and more risk. People threw wisdom out the door.” But now “consumers are discovering maybe they don’t need four flat screens TVs, maybe not even one,” he said.

THE SFDC’S GOAL for this first-ever summit was to make small business owners aware of the services agencies provide and put a face with a name, according to Loretta Mayfield, SFDC’s marketing manager.

Howard Newman was one of those Richmond Highway business owners who met with Dave Fuller, the Business Services manager with the Virginia Department of Business Assistance.

Newman, who has owned Fast Signs of Alexandria, learned how he could make his company more attractive to the state almost overnight by making changes in how he markets his products to government.

“We expanded the range of our products by being more comprehensive,” he said.

In short, Fast Signs has the capability of producing say widget AA1 but governments need widget AA2. Newman has always had the capacity for producing AA2 but didn’t market his firm for the capability. Now that he has expanded his product line, he has made his business more appealing to government contractors.

“It was very instructive. I didn’t expect that to happen,” said the owner of the 18-year-old business.

The state’s representative gave Newman “great ideas to work for VDOT (Virginia Department of Transportation). People were anxious to help small businesses become as viable as possible.”

Newman has owned the business since 1999. This past year he has had to layoff one employee of five and reduced the number of hours the four remaining employees work.

Newman admits that marketing and advertising budgets are the first to go in any business that is suffering financially. “People aren’t able to buy. If they don’t advertise, we don’t produce. Small businesses are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, but if you give up, you’re toast,” he said.

ABELLA IS responsible for the financial-end of his three-year-old family-owned restaurant in Lorton.

The summit was “timely because I’m trying to refinance some of our debt to move ahead and make it through these times,” he said.

And he appears to be moving in the right direction. A bank representative was present at the summit and Abella met with him days afterward.

“That’s the kind of quick response needed,” he said. But in order to qualify for loans guaranteed by the SBA, Abella is going to have to hurry in order to meet the agency’s Dec. 31 deadline. “I’m racing against the clock,” he said, but confident he can provide his business plan and other paperwork on time.

SFDC is a public/private non-profit economic development corporation designed to provide assistance to existing and potential business on Richmond Highway with expertise in locations, demographics, property inventory, and financing information. It receives an annual budget of $192,000 from Fairfax County.

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