Royal Quality Laundry, a full-service laundry company based in Malibu, Calif., has been awarded a $10,000 grant to help rebuild the business after last year’s wildfires devastated a good portion of L.A. County.
“We lost about 80 percent of our business after the fire,” said Natalie Camacho, founder and president at RQL.
Fortunately, Camacho – who is among an exclusive group of minority women who own their own businesses – discovered a loan program from Women’s Economic Ventures, recently funded by the Wells Fargo Works for Small Business: Diverse Community Capital program. And WEV awarded Royal Quality Laundry the grant.
WEV is a nonprofit based in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Its mission is to help small-business owners launch, grow and succeed in business. In fact, the recent contribution from Wells Fargo has enabled WEV to award 38 business recovery grants to small businesses that were economically impacted by the 2018 fires.
Thus far, Natalie has been able to use the grant for marketing, supplies, employee uniforms and other necessities. The program also offers training and consulting.
“The grant has been a tremendous help for Royal Quality Laundry,” Camacho explained. “We are so grateful that Wells Fargo and WEV have been so eager to help us recover from the fire. We are still allocating how we’d like to spend the remaining grant money, as we want to be wise about how we use it.”
