For Naillali Rodriguez, embroidery is a way to help people make an idea visible.
Through Bordame Esto LLC, her custom embroidery and design business in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, Rodriguez creates personalized shirts, sweaters, hats, jerseys, and other products for customers across the region. Her work ranges from “Mama” T-shirts and holiday apparel to custom artwork, concert jerseys, company uniforms, and full merchandise orders for local sports teams.
Rodriguez draws on years of experience in customization, strong relationships within the local softball community, and connections built through her family’s roasted green chile stand at the farmers’ market. Those community ties helped her establish a loyal customer base after founding Bordame Esto in 2023.
As demand grew, Rodriguez saw an opportunity to expand beyond individual orders and serve more businesses, schools, athletic programs, and community organizations. But accepting larger and more frequent orders would require additional embroidery equipment and inventory.
For small businesses, growth often depends on making investments before the resulting revenue arrives. A new machine can increase production, but the business must first find the money to purchase it. Additional inventory can make it possible to accept larger orders, but materials must be acquired before those orders are completed and paid for. In rural communities, where entrepreneurs may have fewer nearby financial institutions and funding options, obtaining that capital can be particularly difficult.
Rodriguez found support through First Southwest Community Fund, the nonprofit partner created by First Southwest Bank to expand access to capital for rural Colorado entrepreneurs. In August 2024, Bordame Esto received a $9,500 loan to purchase equipment and inventory and increase its production capacity.
Since receiving the loan, Rodriguez has continued investing in the business. Bordame Esto now has more than $30,000 in equipment and recently added a second commercial embroidery machine. The company also employs two people part time.
That added capacity supports a broad and highly repeat customer base. Bordame Esto serves local businesses such as trucking companies, contractors, restaurants, ranches, repair shops, towing companies, and agricultural enterprises. Its customers also include school districts, colleges, churches, public agencies, nonprofit organizations, youth programs, and sports teams throughout the San Luis Valley. Commercial customers return year after year for branded apparel and merchandise, providing the business with an important source of recurring revenue.
The investment therefore reaches beyond a single entrepreneur. Bordame Esto helps other local businesses and organizations promote their identities, outfit their employees and teams, recognize special events, and connect with their own customers and communities. By providing these services locally, the company helps keep more economic activity within the region while strengthening relationships among rural enterprises.
This is the type of financing challenge First Southwest Bank and First Southwest Community Fund are designed to address together. First Southwest Bank, a Community Development Financial Institution, created the nonprofit fund in 2015 after recognizing that some promising businesses, particularly startups and enterprises that fell outside traditional lending policies, still lacked access to capital. The fund provides nontraditional financing and business support, sometimes helping entrepreneurs prepare for conventional bank financing and sometimes offering standalone funding tailored to rural needs.
That model reflects an understanding that rural entrepreneurs do not lack ideas, determination, or customers. They may simply need financial products that recognize the circumstances in which their businesses operate.
First Southwest Bank is a CNote Impact Cash® partner. Through CNote, deposits from values-aligned investors help strengthen mission-driven financial institutions serving communities that have historically had fewer financial resources. That support contributes to a broader financial ecosystem in which entrepreneurs like Rodriguez have more opportunities to obtain the capital they need.
With two commercial embroidery machines, a growing base of repeat customers, two part-time employees, and deep roots in the San Luis Valley, Bordame Esto is turning a relatively small loan into expanded business capacity and lasting local opportunity, one stitch at a time.
