Nevada

Star Village Coffee

Location: Reno, Nevada
Website: https://www.starvillagecoffee.com/
26,000 lbs of coffee roasted annually

As a boy, Joel Zuniga moved with his family from downtown Reno to the remote mountains of Nevada’s Hungry Valley, where they lived among fellow members of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. As an adult, after a chance encounter with a coffee harvest on a visit to Costa Rica, Joel returned home, learned to roast beans in the artisanal spirit of the Great Basin, and co-founded Star Village Coffee with his twin brother, Josh, in 2018. Today Star Village sells world-class coffee online and wholesale, and in their Reno cafe they blend it with indigenous ingredients, as in their pine nut spice latte with handmade pine nut milk. For Joel, coffee is both a passion and a way to practice “Rezonomics,” the philosophy of investing time, talent, and love back into the circle of tribal life.

Joel and his team use Google Workspace to update orders and inventory in real time, so the roastery can get orders out faster and fresher. Google Analytics shows them where their e-commerce pages can be better optimized to increase sales, and their Google Business Profile gives customers easy directions to their retail cafe. “We saw requests for directions shoot up 129% this month, which tells us we’re having a good month,” Joel says. Star Village Coffee serves over 20,000 customers annually and roasted over 26,000 pounds of coffee last year, an increase of 40 percent year-over-year. Revenue is growing 30 percent annually, and Star Village recently secured contracts to provide its high-grade specialty coffees to a well-known portfolio of casinos. Star Village employs local native residents and hosts tribal students each month, teaching them about roasting, entrepreneurship, and optimism. “If you’re curious about wanting to start a business yourselves, there's a place for you,” Joel says. “If we can invest in ourselves and invest in one another, we can truly uplift our own people.”

Michael and Son’s Jewelers

Location: Reno, Nevada
Website: https://michaelandsonsjewelers.com/
30% of new customers acquired through Google Ads

Six months after owner David Lorenz moved Michael and Son’s Jewelers to a 7,500-square-foot store in midtown Reno, the city began a two-year construction project on his street. Then came the pandemic. Yet the store, founded by his father in 1983 and purchased by David in 1990, continued to grow. “We’ve just had our two best years,” David says. “We’ve increased our customer base 20 percent, and we’re projecting high revenue this year, which is impressive in our industry for a small family-owned business.” David credits this success to an emphasis on great customer service and omnichannel marketing involving direct mail, email, and online advertising. “I’ve always embraced technology as a way to help us reach customers,” he says, “because we’re competing not only with local brick-and-mortar stores, but with the internet.”

To drive more traffic to their website, the company started running Google Ads in 2019. “Our customers research online and then finalize their purchases in the store,” David explains. The strategy paid off: over the last two years, revenue has grown an average of 25 percent annually. “Thirty percent of new customers have come through Google Ads,” he says. In 2021, the company launched a Google Business Profile that has garnered a 4.9-star rating from nearly 500 reviews and generates about half of the store’s new customers. “When we ask people how they heard about us,” he says, “if it wasn’t through word of mouth or referral, it was through our Business Profile.” Looking forward, David plans to increase his online advertising budget and streamline operations with Google Workspace tools such as Gmail, Calendar, and Drive. “I see us only going forward,” he says. “In the 33 years we’ve owned this company, we’ve always had positive growth. We don’t just sell a commodity. We create memories.”

Tea and Whisk

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Website: https://teaandwhisk.com/
50% of new customers from online leads

Leo Lukidi owned a kitchenware store in 2016, when he hosted a tea sampling so popular that it convinced him to switch gears. Knowing little about tea, he planned to model Tea and Whisk on popular mall tea chains, where fruit-forward teas take center stage. “People treat me like I’m a tea master, like I’ve been drinking tea since I was a little kid, and it wasn’t like that at all,” Leo admits. “But I soon discovered premium teas and the history of the tea ceremony, and I really fell in love.” Today, Tea and Whisk focuses on introducing customers to the real deal. “As soon as people try premium teas, they’ll never go back,” he says. Tea and Whisk began as a cafe, but COVID-19 led Leo to pivot to sales and one-on-one sessions, where he can educate customers on brewing and enjoying tea as it was done 2,000 years ago. “I’m growing a tea culture that has been missing from the industry,” he says. That meant fewer customers, but each interaction had more value.

Leo’s Google Business Profile helps customers find the store: Three to five people a day use it to contact him. In 2020, he began using Google Ads to find more future tea lovers for both in-store classes and website sales. “I use Google Analytics to look at the sales that come from Google Ads, and it always beats the organic sales,” Leo says. Google Analytics also helps Tea and Whisk understand its international clientele in places like Ireland, where Leo has a small but growing contingent of fans. Website sales have increased more than 1500 percent since 2019, and now account for 60 percent of the company’s business. Next up for Tea and Whisk is a possible membership plan that incorporates workshops, special seasonal offerings, and even a tea farm tour. “I want to show my customers how the leaves are cleaned, how they’re roasted–because they have become so passionate about tea,” Leo says. “It’s our life now.”

Sunrise Coffee

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Website: http://www.sunrisecoffeelv.com/
300% online sales growth

Juanny Romero is used to challenges—she opened her first coffee shop in 2008 at the start of the Great Recession. By founding Sunrise Coffee and its partner roastery, Mothership Coffee Roasters, Juanny wanted to bring a neighborhood coffee shop to Las Vegas. Building a sense of community within a welcoming, eclectic atmosphere was just as important to her as offering world-class roasts. Digital products weren’t a big part of the business at first. “My life is all about what I can see, touch, and smell, so I approached the digital world with hesitation,” Juanny says. But after seeing the impact of positive reviews posted to her Business Profile on Google, she was convinced. She began using Google Ads and took the team digital with Google Workspace products like Calendar and Docs to stay organized and process paperwork. The company has since expanded to three locations, and strives to be eco-conscious, using fair trade practices and ethically-sourced beans. Sunrise Coffee is the oldest independent coffee shop in Las Vegas.

COVID-19 brought Juanny her biggest challenge yet. With in-person orders down, she had to adapt to keep the business going. The digital groundwork was in place, but she needed new revenue streams. Juanny decided to focus on her e-commerce site, where people could buy Mothership’s specialty coffee beans from the safety of their homes. She adjusted her Google Ads and social media campaigns to direct customers to the website, resulting in a 300-percent increase in online sales. “The digital side of the business is what really saved us,” Juanny says. “Moreover, it opened the door to a whole new online community that is going to continue positively impacting us into the future.” Juanny harnessed the power of that community by adding a button on her website for coffee donations to first responders—over 2,000 cups of coffee have been donated so far. Says Juanny, “The sense of community I found online reminded me of why I started a coffee shop in the first place.”

Suddora

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Website: www.suddora.com
5 employees

When college student Paul Serra got a summer job working at a video store for Adam Topping, neither dreamed they would end up running a multi-million-dollar business together. While working at the store, Paul, a lifelong guitarist, was also thinking about selling sweatbands and other promotional products with his band’s logo on them. He did some market research. “It turned out that a lot more people wanted sweatbands for athletic use,” Paul said. Having become friends, Paul and Adam teamed up to launch Suddora, a sweatband and sporting accessories brand, in 2008. By focusing on a niche market and offering dozens of colors and sizes, Suddora was able to find an audience online. “You can go into any sporting goods store and buy a sweatband or two, but you can’t buy them in 20 different colors because no store is going to stock that inventory,” said Paul. “Our business would never be able to exist if it wasn’t for the internet.”

Paul and Adam didn’t find Suddora’s customer base on their own; they used Google Ads to better reach people searching for sweatbands or similar products online. “We were using Google’s Shopping ads from the beginning,” Paul said. Suddora also uses Google Analytics to learn more about its customers and to optimize its search campaigns. “We look at different data to see what is and isn’t working and update our site to make conversions better,” said Paul. In addition, Paul relies on G Suite tools like Gmail, Calendar, and Drive to stay organized.

Suddora allocates almost 90% of its marketing budget to digital advertising and reports a $1.50 return for every $1 spent on Google Ads. In 2018, the company launched a U.K. website and served more than 160,000 customers worldwide. Suddora gives back each October by donating 10% of its sales to fighting breast cancer and sponsoring a number of local sports teams. “Our community is online,” said Paul. “We always find people to partner up with and to sponsor or donate to.” Paul and Adam have come a long way from the video store, and they plan to keep on going, growing their headband business and expanding their football category to include accessories like towels and hand warmers. “Some of Adam’s friends were taking bets on how fast we’d fold after we launched in 2008. But we’re still very much here, and we will continue giving our customers high-quality products,” Paul said.

GoJump Las Vegas (Vegas Extreme Skydiving)

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Website: www.vegasextremeskydiving.com
9 employees

Many people fall in love with their job, but Edward Carroll literally tumbled head over heels for his. After retiring from the British Army as a paratrooper, Edward moved to Las Vegas in 2003 and founded Vegas Extreme Skydiving to share his passion for thrill-seeking with visitors from all over the world. “People who come to Vegas want to try different things. With skydiving, there is an actual feeling of flying, and it’s very addictive,” he says. “The weather is also perfect for jumping out of airplanes.” Using over 37 years of experience, Edward grew Vegas Extreme Skydiving from modest beginnings to the premier choice for high-flying thrills. “We may not be the biggest, but we’re the best in the business,” he assures.

With so many other attractions vying for visitors’ attention, Vegas Extreme Skydiving uses the power of the Internet to stand out from the competition. Mind-warping videos on YouTube provide thousands of curious viewers with the visceral thrill of skydiving. AdWords, Google’s advertising program, helps keep the business on top of visitors’ minds and web searches. And Google Analytics gives Edward the insights to optimize his online performance and make the most of his time and budget. “I want to be in every magazine and every billboard, but there’s a limit to what you can do. As a small business, you have to focus on the essential things,” he says. “These days, that thing is Google.”

Today the sky’s the limit for Vegas Extreme Skydiving. They have expanded their VIP offerings to include everything from basic lessons with expert instructors to skydiving weddings. They now operate a brand-new Cessna 208 Super Caravan, the most advanced skydiving airplane in the world, and use it to ferry 6,000 jumpers into the wild blue yonder each year. “I always knew that if we were kind, were respectful to customers, and provided a first-class service, then good things would come,” Edward says. Over 50,000 visitors set foot in Edward’s state-of-the-art facility annually, and he uses that positive buzz to give back to his Las Vegas community. “We give away lots of skydives to charity every year,” he shares. “In this town, small businesses look out for each other.” When it comes to making a local impact, sometimes the best perspective is from 15,000 feet up.

5 Star Helicopter Tours

Location: Boulder City, Nevada
Website: www.5starhelicoptertours.com
60 employees

What do you do when you have over 25 years of tourism experience and live in one of the most scenic destinations in the country? For husband-and-wife team John and Melanie Power, the answer was simple: You offer VIP helicopter tours at an affordable price. “It’s a saturated industry, but we felt there was a better way to provide that sort of service to the customer,” says Mark Stanway, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. They launched 5 Star Helicopter Tours in 2012, offering daily first class aerial trips to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon and nightly flights over shimmering Las Vegas to visitors from all over the world.

Like Las Vegas itself, 5 Star Helicopter Tours has grown from modest beginnings to the premier choice for Nevada adventure. They operate a fleet of five Airbus helicopters and 10 Mercedes-Benz ground transportation vehicles to shuttle customers to and from their hotels, and offer an entire portfolio of outdoor excursions, including ATV tours and overnight camping trips. The company relies on Google tools to compete in an already crowded market. AdWords, Google's advertising program, drives awareness and keeps 5 Star at the top of visitors' minds and web searches. “It drives over half of our online traffic and reminds customers that we're here,” Mark says. “That's very important.” They also use Google Analytics to measure their web traffic and adjust their marketing strategy accordingly. And through YouTube videos, they attract curious visitors with inside looks of their VIP services. “Everything Google is doing is hugely significant for our company’s success,” Mark says.

Today, 5 Star Helicopter Tours is as big of a Las Vegas act as any. They’ve already shared the glory of the desert with over 120,000 customers. Their website sales continue to grow by 65 percent annually, with AdWords driving 45 percent of that growth. And with plans to purchase two additional helicopters, they have no intention of slowing down. “We want people to enjoy more of what helicopters can do and make memories that they're going to share for the rest of their lives,” Mark says. With Google, small businesses like 5 Star Helicopter Tours can bet on themselves and their future.

Radioactive Productions

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Website: www.radioactiveproductions.net
10 full- and part-time employees.

Enrique Villar-Mendez and Lora Hendrickson founded Radioactive Productions in 2012 with a business plan and a hope that a viral video would send them zooming toward success. Instead, they realized the greater business potential in creating consistent, high-quality online content. In addition to projects for clients in the hospitality industry, they also create a variety of government and educational videos. “This is definitely a small production company,” Lora says. “What's incredible, though, is that we have the opportunity to play on a level playing field. Because we are more creative, more innovative, or resonate more strongly with our clients, we're able to compete.”

The partners quickly found that YouTube was their most valuable online tool. The platform allows them to easily, quickly, and securely share videos publicly and privately with clients. “YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world,” Enrique says. “It's free, and gives you all these analytics about how your videos are performing. We’ll even set up a client’s YouTube channel if they don't know how to.” The company also relies on the Google Apps for Work suite of tools—including Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar—to communicate both internally and externally. “We have a very finite budget, and we need to maximize every dollar,” Lora says. “By using Google products, we don't have to pay for expensive software.”

Radioactive Productions is now growing more than 50% year-over-year. Their staff and client list have expanded as well. The partners proudly point out that their small production company recently beat out bigger competitors to land a large university contract. In time, Enrique and Lora hope to produce original digital content. “Being a small business is a fun challenge, an adventure, and definitely a roller coaster,” Lora says. “Sometimes dollars and size don't matter, but passion and creativity can go very far.”