Here is a positive follow up to the somewhat negative story I reported last month in my post “Enterprise Zones Underutilized?” The Imperial Valley Press recently profiled a new small business that was able to use the Enterprise Zone program to great advantage:

The 33-year-old entrepreneur [Kevin Forrester] opened up his stone veneer manufacturing company, Forestone Inc., in Brawley about 15 months ago.

Forrester has said he wouldn’t have been able to do that had it not been for this city having an enterprise zone that allowed him to take advantage of employee tax credits. Instead he was seriously thinking about opening up the manufacturing plant in Mexicali.

Today, he’s exporting for the first time stone veneer made here to three distributors and two major contractors on the other side of the border.

“It’s kind of confidence-building. … We’re staying on this side of the border and selling to the other side. That’s just huge,” Forrester said.

His company made its first shipment to Mexicali two weeks ago and is slated to export another shipment in the next two weeks. The shipments are valued at roughly $40,000, he said. The stone veneer retails for about $5.50 per square foot.

Although exports to Mexico account for just 10 percent of his business, Forrester said he plans to grow the export side of his operation in the coming years.