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Hispanic business goes west

Eyeing a growing minority population, especially in New Port Richey, a couple opens a service aimed at shipping items and sending money south of the border.

By JODIE TILLMAN
Published August 7, 2006

	[Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton]
	Latino Envios owner Eliana Fernandez, 31, sorts through music from Mexico for a customer while her children Kisha, 5, and Daniel, 10, play a computer game and Tiffany, 7 months, watches from big brother's lap. "I'm the map. Many people come to me as a point of contact," Fernandez says.

NEW PORT RICHEY - Pat and Eliana Fernandez figured they couldn't be the only ones tired of driving to Tampa to send packages to Central and South America.

So four months ago, the couple opened Latino Envios - "Latin shipments" - as a Main Street business specializing in shipping items south.

Their customers include Guatemala natives sending packages to their families and Mexicans wiring home money to their families or cashing checks.

"It's been very busy," said Eliana Fernandez, who maintains her Colombian citizenship but is a legal resident of the United States.

Latino Envios would hardly stand out in other Tampa Bay area cities, where a growing number of businesses are aimed at Hispanics. Even in east Pasco, where there has been a consistent Mexican population, the store would not be all that unusual.

But in west Pasco, the whitest part of a very white county, a business aimed solely at Hispanics is a rare thing. Another one is International Latin Market, a grocery store, in the strip mall near the intersection of U.S. 19 and Main Street.

Depending on how Latino Envios fares, it could signal the beginning of a small, but sustainable, market niche serving the pockets of minorities within west Pasco.

In 2004, more than 31,000 people out of Pasco's total population of 402,000 - about 8 percent - identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino, according to the American Community Survey, a product of the U.S. Census Bureau.

That was up about 2 percent from the 2000 U.S. Census.

The 2000 census, the most recent population data that is broken down by neighborhood, showed higher percentages of minority populations forming in parts of west Pasco, particularly in downtown New Port Richey.

Indeed, Pat Fernandez says many of their customers are Mexican workers who live in downtown New Port Richey, particularly rental units around Congress Street.

"There's a lot of Spanish-speaking people coming through Pasco," he said.

There are people like Armando Cantera, a Mexican with a work visa who is working for a landscaping company and renting a place with his brother, friend and two cousins on Cecilia Drive. He came by Latino Envios one recent Friday to see about getting his check cashed.

"My friend told me about it," he said as he waited in line behind another customer.

And there are customers with very different backgrounds. Dario Teicher, a U.S. Navy commander who lives in Suncoast Lakes, happened by the store while he was driving through downtown with his family. His wife needed to send money to her family in Colombia, so they stopped.

"I think this is the closest one," said Teicher, who moved to the area a month ago. "In Miami, you have them on just about every corner."

Latino Envios contracts with two companies, one that sends packages by plane to South America and Mexico and one that sends packages by ship to Central America. The first company charges by weight and the second by volume. For instance, the largest box bound for Guatemala, at 34 by 26 by 26 inches, costs $305 to send.

In addition to shipping packages, wiring money and cashing checks, the business also sells Latino television cable packages, telephone cards, soccer jerseys and CDs of such Hispanic singers as Selena and Pepe Aguilar.

The Fernandezes, who live in New Port Richey, usually have their three children at the store, too. Ten-year-old Daniel helps take care of his younger sisters, 5-year-old Kisha and 7-month-old Tiffany, while their parents tend to customers.

And Eliana is also trying to fill a less business-oriented role in the community. Many of her Mexican customers who speak no English are comfortable asking her for help, so she sometimes goes with them to medical appointments to help them understand their doctors.

On a recent afternoon, three Mexicans silently filed into the store before beginning their evening shift cleaning offices. They were there to learn basic English skills from Eliana, who herself learned English in the past year. She does not charge for her time.

"It's funny because I don't speak much," she said. "They want to go places like Burger King, but they can't tell the cashiers what they want."

As the Hispanic population continues to grow, the bigger question is not whether there is a Hispanic market in Pasco but whether Hispanic businesses can hold onto their customers, said Bill Sanchez, a Pasco County resident and program manager for the nonprofit Tampa Bay Community Development Corp. in Clearwater.

Large corporations have started recognizing the market and can undercut family-owned businesses with lower prices, he said.

And Hispanic business owners sometimes see their work as "a way to survive," rather than a profitmaking venture that must grow, he said. "Hispanics are loyal customers," said Sanchez, who is hoping to start a network of Hispanic-owned businesses in Pasco. "But loyalty only goes so far."

Staff writer Matt Waite contributed to this report. Jodie Tillman can be reached at 869-6247 or jtillman@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 6, 2006, 21:22:21]