Small businesses

Shane and Amanda Byrne are the owners of Clickety Clack Typewriters, a new store in Rolla that sells and services old typewriters and is fostering a community of fellow enthusiasts.

Park Central Development opened the Eric Outlaw Business Center, a minority retail business incubator this month in the Grove. For the next 14 months, three Black women entrepreneurs will sell their products in the center to help scale their businesses.

It gives three north St. Louis neighborhoods a better platform to approach the city or private funding sources for economic development projects.

Shopping as a plus-size person is notoriously difficult. A new vintage thrift store, Ethical Bodies x the Good-ish, is working to change that.

St. Louis business leaders announce financial incentives aimed at bringing businesses downtown. They say $350,000 in grants and other incentives could attract retail shops, restaurants and pop-up enterprises.

A free mentorship program is giving entrepreneurs feedback on their grant applications.

“You cannot move forward if everybody else does not have the opportunity to move forward. That was a major philosophical shift to address racial and spatial inequities that have held this region back for far too long,” said one leader.

“There are people that have applications, there are businesses that have been waiting and counting on the opportunity to be able to get this money to build or revitalize their business,” said the bill’s sponsor.

Smaller companies can offer more unique solutions to problems the military faces, but they can struggle to break into a defense industry that can be frustrating to navigate.

The Heffern family has spent 109 years and three generations as St. Louis jewelers. Kit Heffern and his son Webster discuss the family’s century-long history – and the store’s next chapter under Webster’s leadership.