Entrepreneur seeks state grant to grow business

MILLINOCKET – Like so many manufacturers and businesspeople in Millinocket, Carla Portwine often has to travel hundreds of miles to get new customers. Fully half of her client accounts come from places like Orono and Portland or farther away, she said Saturday.

That’s why Portwine of Maine is applying for a matching $10,000 seed grant from the Maine Technology Institute that will help her defray travel costs, expand her product line and might eventually lead to her hiring more workers, Portwine said.

“It’s going to allow us to expand our Web site business [portwineofmaine.com] and our visibility at trade shows,” Portwine said Saturday. “Because of the cost of trips and registration fees, some shows are $1,200 just to attend.”

Portwine has been working with Town Manager Eugene Conlogue on the grant application since mid-November, she said. It will hit the mail today.

If she gets the $10,000, she will match the grant with $10,000 of her owns fund to pay for trips to the Maine Restaurant Association show in early April and the New England Products Trade Show in mid-March.

Both are in Portland and are crucial to her plans to expand wholesale gift-basket, cheese and other product sales to restaurants, hotels, tourist shops and other outlets, she said.

“Being realistic, we can increase our sales of [some items] by at least 30 percent,” Portwine said. “You really need to go to these shows, particularly after winter, when things quiet down a lot.”

Located at 245 Aroostook Avenue, Portwine of Maine sells gift baskets, cheese spreads, Maine-made wines, gift items, sparkling cider and grape juice, art work and other goods – about 100 mostly Maine-made specialty gift items, up from 20 items when the storefront opened in May, said Peter Portwine, Carla’s husband.

“Every week, we are adding new things,” Peter Portwine said.

A state funded, private, nonprofit organization, the Maine Technology Institute offers early-stage, patient capital and commercialization assistance for the research and development of innovative, technology based projects that create new products and services, generating jobs in the state of Maine, according to its Web site.

Portwine of Maine has grown steadily. The company just hired its fourth worker, Katie Jordan, 24, of Millinocket, last week and plans to hire a fifth within a month. Two more could be on the payroll by summer, Portwine said.

It has added four new cheese spreads – cajun, jalapeno chipotle, gourmet garlic and garden vegetable – to its maiden portwine spread and has started making peanut butter milk chocolate treats and selling new Maine-made sodas, she said.

The company has increased cheese production from about 125 pounds weekly to 200 pounds and now sells soups and salads at its storefront.

It opted to avoid selling sandwiches and coffee so as not to compete with nearby Angelo’s Pizza at 118 Penobscot Avenue, Mountain Village Company at 112 Central St., and other downtown coffee sellers, she said.

Portwine said she hopes that the grant would reverse the tiring trend of having to travel so much, something the holiday season seems to be doing.

“Now we are starting to see customers coming all the way from Bangor just to shop here,” Portwine said. “It’s pretty nice.”