In 2020, Stacey and Ben Martinelli opened a new Wedding/Event venue, The Eloise. It's a state of the art, modern and elegant themed facility for weddings of all sizes. The Eloise is nestled in the countryside of Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, and sits along a picturesque forest. It is surrounded by prairie grass and wildflowers and is ideal for outdoor ceremonies and beautiful wedding photos. The facility holds approximately 250 people. It has indoor and outdoor space for ceremonies and receptions.
For the construction of The Eloise, the Martinellis secured long-term fixed rate financing with a SBA 504 loan, partnering with WBD and Fortifi Bank.
Ben Martinelli provided us their story of bringing The Eloise to life, experiences along the way, and the successes and challenges in starting a business.
WBD: Can you tell us about your business – how it started, keys to success, challenges?
"The Eloise is a wedding and event venue located in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, about 20 minutes outside of Madison. Our facility has a modern feel, simple elegant touches and all the romantic charm of the country that you want and need for a memorable celebration. Oddly enough, the idea for The Eloise started out as a joke. When we got married, we struggled to find a venue that fit our personal style. We knew we weren’t alone. Stacey would joke during our search that “we should build a wedding venue”. Living in California at the time and getting prepared to move again for my job, this time to Northern California, Stacey pitched me the wedding venue. This time she had a concept design, name and approximate location where the venue had to be located. We were all in after that point. Fast forward 4 years, we bought land, completed the design and started/finished building The Eloise on our wedding anniversary on August 20th, 2020."
WBD: What projects, both real estate and equipment, has WBD and namely the SBA 504 program worked with you on and how has it enabled you to meet your expansion goals – production, new products, better serve customers?
"WBD along with our community bank Fortifi were an integral part to helping our start-up wedding/event venue get off the ground. We started coordinating with WBD/Fortifi about two years before we ever broke ground on The Eloise. We talked through expectations, how much we needed to save, timeline, etc. We established a clear plan that we could execute and make sure that we were prepared to hit the construction start date which we successfully did. The Eloise would not be here today if it wasn’t for WBD and Fortifi Bank."
WBD: Did you have a good experience working with WBD? Would you work with us again?
"This is an astounding “Yes” to both of these questions. It was an absolute pleasure working with the entire WBD team from the start with the VP-Loan Officer (Nick) to the close-out team (Katie, Tammy). Everyone was very helpful and took the time to explain certain items that we did not understand. We already have other business ideas that we have been talking over between ourselves and it would be a no-brainer to team up with WBD and Fortifi bank again for these next ventures."
WBD: What have been your keys to success so far – employees, timing, hard work? Challenges?
"A major key to our success has been our hard work and dedication to our small business and providing our clients with excellent customer service and a unique experience at The Eloise. We pride ourselves on providing a one-of-kind experience to all of our couples. Not only do we have a unique venue, our exceptional customer service sets us apart from our competitors. The pandemic has been our biggest challenge that we could have never planned for when starting our business. Our hard work and dedication has allowed us to succeed even though we were completely shut down (9 months) as soon as we opened. We both worked multiple jobs (Stacey working 3 at one point) to ensure that The Eloise would be there for our couples once we all weathered this pandemic. We have put our heart and soul into our business to ensure The Eloise will be there for our current couples and all of our future couples."
WBD: Do you have any advice for other business owners in taking that next step to growing their business?
- "First and foremost, look into the amazing programs that WBD and SBA have to offer. This program allows you to expand your business with reasonable interest rates and favorable terms.
- Don’t pass up putting together your detailed business plan. I know this seems like common sense advice, but this document is commonly overlooked. Start with a rough outline instead of a detailed plan on how you want to operate your business. It can be cumbersome at times (ours took over 6 months to put together) but it is single handedly the most important document to your business.
- Establish a reliable and experienced team that will support your business. This includes an accountant, lawyer, lender, etc. It’s important to interview multiple businesses and pick the business that has experience in your industry and who you get along with best. Getting referrals from other businesses is a great way to narrow down this list to pick from.
- Prior to signing the construction contract, make sure to include a healthy contingency in the construction budget and save additional funds for change orders, especially if you are not familiar or experienced with the construction process. It does not matter how good the plan your general contractor has to execute the project as there will always be an issue that arises that neither of you could have seen. Take it from someone who has been in the construction industry for 13 years and successfully completed million/billion dollar projects. Be patient when these issues arise but make those decisions quickly once you have all the information and do not revisit those decisions. Going back on decisions you have made will cost 3-4 times more than if you made that decision initially."
Congratulations and thank you to the Ben and Stacey for their success and partnership in working with WBD and Fortifi Bank. We wish you the best of luck and thank you for sharing your experience with us. For our readers, please visit https://theeloiseevents.com/ for more information. And remember to support your local small businesses.
