Another Southern California Business Leaving for Las Vegas

Santa Monica - In this edition of our "Saving the California Dream" series, we hear from Jody Sherman, who owns Ecomom -- a company that makes eco-friendly products for the home.

Although he founded it here in SoCal, he's moving his company to Las Vegas in January.

He explains the gut-wrenching decision.

Jody Sherman
"Ecomom is a website that helps families make healthy choices. We identify products that are safe to put in, on and around your children. We do a deep evaluation of those products and then we offer them for sale."

Heidi
"Santa Monica seems like a perfect place for that business."

Jody
"I mean it is, we started here and I grew up in Caliornia... We were probably born here because of that healthy lifestyle we were trying to live."

Heidi
"Here you are getting keys on the spot in Vegas, and how hard was that for you personally to have to like make that commitment?"

Jody
"It's really tough.... the main this is that I never thought that that would be necessary. Like it was never in my business plan to move to Las Vegas in order to be successful, it just turns out that there is a really great opportunity to build a bigger better company for much less money and that is good for my investors, it's good for my team, it's good for my customers.

"When were like 15 people, hiring isn't that hard but when I am 500 people in a couple years and half of those people are in customer loyalty I am not going to be able to hire them here, I am not going to be able to afford to if I could."

Heidi
"What could California have done to prevent you from leaving?"

Jody
"If there was a lower cost for employees and the cost for workers compensation, the amount of taxes. I mean that is a big deal when you are a young company.... The incentive to pay taxes to the state of California for my employees and have it cost me more to do that is kind of at odds with being able to grow your company....If it was more kind of start up friendly here, if it was more of an easier environment to grow from a small company into a big company, I could see putting more people here."

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We lost about 200 companies last year here in California, which is four times more than we lost in 2009.

One of the enticements of Las Vegas for a company his size is no state income tax, so his employees automatically get a ten percent pay increase and he estimates he'll save about 15 percent across the board annually. For a company that grew five times bigger from 2010 to 2011 that's significant.

California leaders should be looking for ways to connect with small growing businesses to proactively prevent more losses.

Online:

Ecomom
www.ecomom.com