La Reina Auto Sales and Service

La Reina Auto Sales and Service provides repair and maintenance work for vehicles. The business is also a used car dealership. Maria D. Aaron started the business in December 2003.

Being a Hispanic woman in this line of business is extremely tough. 95% of owners of auto dealerships and mechanic shop are men. The client is usually not being taken seriously when she goes to auction to buy used cars. She also gets a lot of resistance from her clients who didn’t have confidence in her expertise just because she is a woman.

Despite all of the challenges, her business made a profit every year until 2015. That was the first year that the business suffered a loss. At that time, Maria didn’t have the fund to acquire more equipment or the inventory for her business. When she approached her primary bank for a line of credit, she was denied.

The primary reason she came to Tarrant SBDC is to get assistance for applying a line of credit for their business. The client also wanted to understand how to better manage their cashflow and build business credit for future major purchases like equipment and commercial real estate.

Advisor Cathy Trinh explained the 5C’s of credit underwriting to the client and coached her in becoming bankable. Business advisor also advised the client how to build her business’s credit in the long term and how to keep her personal and business finance separately. The advisor assisted the client in filling out her personal financial statement and packaging her loan. Then the advisor connected the client to a local bank that was appropriate for their situation.

Thanks to the assistance of business advisor Cathy Trinh, Maria was able to secure a line of credit of 150K from Mercantile Bank. The line of credit will help her to solve the cash flow issues, buy more inventory and expand her business.