They’re Enterprising partners
Kevin Cunningham and his partners are content taking on an “old economy” niche business.
A former loan director with Philadelphia-based Advanta Bank Corp., Cunningham’s specialty is finding good deals on equipment leases for other companies. It’s what he’s done for more than 15 years and what he knows best, said the managing director of Enterprising Capital Partners Inc., based in downtown Spokane.
Cunningham helped launch the company in 2003, after returning to his hometown.
The four-person company is an independent leasing and financing agent. Its sweet spot, said Cunningham, is buying equipment for small or midsized firms, then leasing that equipment to them at terms that help both sides of the equation.
It has a balance sheet of $6 million available in capital; about $500,000 has been committed to current leases, said Cunningham. That $6 million will likely grow to around $10 million in the next year, with a large portion coming from Seattle investors, Cunningham said.
Cunningham and his partners, who include John Keiling and co-founder Donald Hackney, have raised some of the $6 million from Spokane investors. They declined to identify those investors, however.
Cunningham is the firm’s managing partner. Keiling is the company’s head of sales.
After getting an undergraduate degree and master’s degree from Gonzaga, Cunningham took off and held jobs in major banks on the East Coast and later in San Francisco. He came back to Spokane in 2001, just as the post-Sept. 11 economy turned dismal here.
He realized, he said, that a leasing equity company here would have few competitors. The nearest example is Appleway Leasing, based in Spokane Valley, which now focuses on financing tractors and trailer trucks for other companies.
Enterprising Capital’s goal is helping lease “everything from computer purchases to heavy drilling equipment,” particularly working with smaller companies that have a strong track record. Like McDonald’s, Enterprising Capital is selling speed and convenience to its customers.
Loans can be approved within about an hour, said Chad Hutson, business development manager for Enterprising Capital. Contracts can be prepared within a day, he added.
Bank loans, by contrast can take more than a week, Cunningham pointed out.
He’s learned that many smaller firms don’t relish the idea of dealing with large banks to arrange leasing terms.
“Smaller companies are at the mercy of what the bank says the financing will be,” said Cunningham.
Enterprising Capital currently has nearly 10 active leases, but none with companies in the Spokane area. The largest customer is an excavation equipment firm in Maine, said Cunningham. That deal resulted from his tenure as an underwriter with Advanta, which had a large leasing division until the company was restructured in 2000 and 2001.
Spokane-based 180Networks used Enterprising Capital two years ago to finance the purchase of new telephone equipment. Cunningham also helped 180Networks Chairman Greg Green refinance some company debt and get extra equity financing.
Enterprising Capital has a handful of Seattle-area customers including B&G Machine, which repairs and sells heavy diesel engines and equipment.
“We’ve used Enterprising Capital a couple of times and plan to keep using them,” said David Bianchi, of B&G Machine. Bianchi said his brother, John Bianchi, met Cunningham when both were students at Gonzaga University.
“When I was a student at Gonzaga with Kevin,” said John Bianchi, “he bought a house to rent it to some of us.” Bianchi said Cunningham has an innate sense of using money productively.
“He’s one of the smartest people about money I know. He knew more about using capital than a lot of professors we had,” said Bianchi.
Cunningham said Enterprising Capital plans to continue its focus on finding customers nationwide, not just the Pacific Northwest. “Most of our business now is national” and should continue that way, he said.
That total leasing market, Cunningham noted, is hardly tiny: “It’s around $10 billion annually,” he said.