Testimonial: Saratoga Cheese Corporation
Saratoga Cheese Corporation gained an inexhaustible management partner when it hired Capital Advocates, LLC in August 2007. Our relationship with Bill Teator has encompassed almost every aspect of our start up business, since then.
His first accomplishment was to help us to redesign our business plan to utilize $14.5 million of equipment leasing to balance our Capital Sources and Uses. He tapped into his network in the Dairy industry to connect us with Clifford Buck, who first used equipment leasing in the building of a Schreiber cheese plant almost 40 years ago. In our current business environment, this experienced hand (Buck) makes equipment leasing still possible.
Bill's next accomplishment was to engage the Cayuga County Industrial Development Agency to pursue a promised $10 million tax free bond for building the factory at Aurelius Industrial Park. Although Saratoga Cheese Corporation had secured the promise in its' own right, it still took Bill's excellent work to connect us with Roosevelt Cross, premier bond underwriters on Wall St., to secure the future placement of this bond with their clientele.
At the same time as he was securing commitment for both the leasing and the bond placement, Bill went to work on securing New York State's $4.5 million in grants and low interest loans to bridge the cost differential between our imported high tech continuous production coagulator and the comparable vat technologies used by our competition. Here, he enlisted the services of Todd Vandervort, and the Vandervort Group to pursue NYS Economic Development Corporation to issue, in advance of completion of our equity investment, it's term sheet for low interest loans, and to fully describe $12.4 million in tax preferences over 10 years for the equity investors of Saratoga Cheese. Completion of this task enables us to favorably negotiate for our $10 million equity investment with wealthy individuals who have a religious interest in our Kosher application to specialty soft cheese production.
Bill Teator and Todd Vandervort secured the support of Senator Nazzolio for our project, and to provide $400,000 in Senate discressionary funds for factory design and site development work at Aurelius IDA site. They also organized a press conference with the Senator, and local officials, October 23, 2007, which lead to 11 newspaper articles and 4 television media reports, which brought to us vendors and contractors in the dairy and construction industry to help further refine our business plan design.
Working further from this media buzz, we were able to pursue a media blast to the Jewish media, which resulted in our story being told in 55 Jewish media outlets in the US. This has brought forward significant investment interest to help us finish our $10 million equity investment cycle, and realize our total project funding.
During the period of July, 2006 to today, Bill has not only accomplished all described, but has continuously worked to keep all these different parties informed and supportive until all the parts of the financing could be brought together over one and a half years.
Larry Rosenbaum
Chairman and Founder
Saratoga Cheese Corporation
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