INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT
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66 Doing Business in Connecticut | 2016
Council of Fairfield County.
About four years ago, the business
council decided that it had spent too much
time courting medium- and large-scale
businesses, and had neglected smaller
companies. It started a fact-finding journey
that led it to some surprising realizations,
Bruhl explained.
"We believed that our colleagues in the
chamber of commerce world, and oth-
ers who were providing direct services to
startups and other small businesses, were
able to do what we were not able to do," he
said. "But the board still felt that the growth
potential of employment was not going to
be driven by large employers, it would be
driven by others."
As the business council investigated the
small-business environment through con-
versations with businesses supporting small
business, it realized it had made "a serious
error by missing the arrival of the start-up
entrepreneurial community," Bruhl ex-
plained. As a consequence of its inattention
to smaller businesses, it had allowed certain
skills of the group to atrophy, he said.
Bruhl and his business council spent
four years developing "a robust set of servic-
es for small businesses," and partnered with
the revitalized and reconstituted Connecti-
cut Small Business Development Center. He
said his group played an instrumental role in
bringing the SBDC to UConn.
Because of this intense research into
small business — coupled with its existing
understanding of larger companies — the
business council found itself in a unique
position when IBM committed, at a White
House conference on small business, to
contribute the technology for a cloud-based
supplier-buyer clearinghouse called Suppli-
er-Connection.com.
e council has been participating in
Above: Chris Skinner, Everett Skinner IV and Everett
Skinner III (left to right) are pictured in their manu-
facturing facility in Ellington. At right: A timber frame
barn built by Great Country Timber Frames, a sister
company of The Barn Yard.
> Continued from page 61
PHOTOS/THE
BARN
YARD
Small Business
