Can you ship me some cash?

Shipping firms like DHL offer microgrants to small businesses in hopes of locking in loyal customers.

By Ian Mount, FSB Magazine contributor
May 31 2007: 5:49 AM EDT

(FSB Magazine) -- When Derrick Miller was looking for money to expand his $29,000-a-year Miami candle business, Cameleon Candle (decoaccent.com), he didn't turn to banks or VCs. Instead, he applied to the shipping firm DHL (dhl.com), which offers microgrants of $1,000 and free shipping.

Small companies that play big

DHL has company in the rush to lock in lifelong business customers when they're young. Through its UPS Capital division (capital.ups.com), UPS (Charts, Fortune 500) made more than $190 million in SBA-backed loans in 2006, up from $153 million in 2005; in 2004, FedEx (Charts, Fortune 500) (fedex.com) started a partnership with the U.S. Commercial Service (buyusa.gov) - a unit of the Department of Commerce that promotes U.S. businesses abroad - to teach small businesses how to export.

For Miller, the DHL grant meant that he could buy and ship in bulk, raising profits from $1 a candle to about $4. For DHL, the grant generated good word-of-mouth advertising.

"Most of my products come from Malaysia, so shipping is pricey," Miller, 33, says. "That $1,000 helped purchase more product that I could ship by sea," Via DHL, of course.

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From the June 1, 2007 issue
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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.