Posted 3:58 am Sunday, September 26, 2010
Lucio's Business One Of 900 Hispanic-Owned In Tyler
By CHAD THOMAS
Business Editor
When the door swings open at his shop, an inviting smell of leather wafts out and Jose Lucio greets visitors with a smile, speaking in a reverent tone and sentences peppered with "sir" and "ma'am."
Business Editor
When the door swings open at his shop, an inviting smell of leather wafts out and Jose Lucio greets visitors with a smile, speaking in a reverent tone and sentences peppered with "sir" and "ma'am."
His voice bears a hint of an East Texas country drawl masked by a charming foreign accent that could only come from a native Spanish speaker.
When he's not manning the counter, he's likely guiding leather footwear through a stitching machine in the back room, a workshop only accessible by a low profiled doorway that forces Lucio, at just 5-7, to mind his head on the way through.
It's the daily routine for the soft-spoken man with salt-and-pepper hair, as it has been for the better part of 27 years since he came to Tyler from Mexico. Take orders, talk shop and make repairs to boots, shoes and leather goods.
Lucio was just 16 when he came to the States. He'd spent the previous six months working a variety of construction jobs in Le?n de los Aldama -- one of Mexico's largest cities -- after leaving school and his family behind in his home of San Felipe, a town of about 15,000 people at the time.
Following his brother, Salvador, who was living and employed in Tyler, Lucio came to the U.S. in 1983. Within a matter of weeks, he was performing odd jobs at Allen's Shoe Repair and Western Store on Front Street.
He spent seven years learning the shoe repair craft and another seven working maintenance and events prep for UT Tyler. He took English language courses at night, earned his Graduate Equivalency Degree and went on to study business for a year at Tyler Junior College.
Eventually, in 1998, Lucio had the skill, the drive and the opportunity to open his own shoe repair business, which he did at 519 S. Beckham Ave.
Since that time, Lucio has been a sort of one-man band at Beckham Shoe and Boot Repair, performing the reception duties as well as the intensive, hands-on resoling and patching jobs behind the scenes.
His wife of 23 years, Annetta, and his brother and sister also help out at the shop from time to time.
While Lucio's path to entrepreneurship was long and winding, it's surprisingly not uncommon.
There are more than 900 Hispanic-owned businesses in Tyler, according to the Tyler Chamber of Commerce. And nearly half a million people of Hispanic or Latino origin own and operate their own businesses in Texas, a number that has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years.
According to a U.S. Census Bureau report released on Tuesday, the number of Hispanic-owned businesses in Texas jumped 40.1 percent from 2002 to 2007, coming to a total of 447,486 businesses. Collectively, they accounted for $62.1 billion in sales over the five-year span.
The numbers shouldn't be a shock. People of Hispanic origin made up almost one-third of the Texas population in 2008, according to the Census Bureau. One out of every six people in Tyler is of Hispanic origin, as well.
Of the Hispanic-owned businesses in Texas, about 80 percent are run by people of Mexican origin, the Census Bureau reported. That translates to about 360,000 men and women.
That number includes Francisco "Paco" Torres, owner of Paleteria y Neveria in Tyler.
The Mexico City native came to Tyler from his home country in 1998, pursuing a business venture and, as he called it, "a dream" to come to America.
In the past 12 years, he's served up Mexican-style sweet treats, first from push carts to neighborhood kids. Almost three years ago, he opened Polar Paleteria y Neveria, or "Polar Popsicles and Ice Cream," on East Erwin Street.
It was a radical departure from his background in Mexico.
He served in the Mexican military and later earned his paycheck as a bodyguard and security agent for telenovella (soap opera) stars for the giant media corporation, Televisa. He owned shoe and clothing stores in the mid 1990s but, thanks to a national economic crisis, was forced to look for alternative means to make ends meet.
Since moving to Tyler, he's opened four ice cream shops, including one in Longview that he's recently sold. In addition to his parlor on Erwin, he's running Polar shops on Vine Street and North Bois D'Arc and employs a staff of eight.
While taxation and permitting rules and regulations were the most daunting trials for Torres in launching his business, language hasn't held him back. Despite the fact his English is spotty, at best, most of his customers are Hispanic and speak Spanish as their primary or secondary language.
Lucio, who now is fluent in English, said the lingual gap poses a struggle for many prospective Hispanic business owners, as it did for him in his first years in the U.S.
"No doubt the barrier of the language and the culture was a challenge. You don't know what to expect," he said. "But not any longer; I don't feel like I have any problems with it."
Fortunately, he said, the people of Tyler and the interaction with customers is far more congenial than in his home country.
"It's East Texas," he said, "the people here are more friendly … in Mexico or in Europe when they come in, it's just business. They get what they need and that's all.
"Here, I see (my regular customers) at church or at my kids' schools."
