MOVE

Business Cost Comparison

Oregon offers more incentive programs to traded sector businesses (companies that sell products or services outside the area) than Washington and California combined. Even without taking those incentives into consideration, Oregon is still a more cost-effective choice for doing business. Contact EDCO for a detailed look at the business costs in Central Oregon.

“While our move to Central Oregon may have started for personal reasons, it has allowed us to do more with our business than we thought possible. It has allowed us to hire amazing employees – the available talent here in Central Oregon has proven to be of the highest caliber and chocked full of integrity. Sometimes you feel like you can get lost in a big city. In Sisters we have been able to be part of a growing and nurturing business community.” - Wyatt

Case Study: Holy Kakow

Founded in Portland in 2009, Holy Kakow creates premium organic chocolate sauces and syrups that are used in coffee shops across the nation and globe. After running the business for nearly a decade, founder Wyatt Woods decided a move to Sisters, Oregon would be beneficial for his family. The next step was to figure out how to move the successful business. After EDCO’s help with site selection, incentives, permitting, and more, Holy Kakow was able to move their operations into a new building in the Sisters Business Park. The relocation allowed them to scale for growth, even during the pandemic, expanding their employment from three to eight in the span of a couple months. Holy Kakow have their sights set on new product launches, and with the backing of the community and the growing number of craft food businesses in Sisters, they’re surrounded by a strong business ecosystem to help them succeed.

RELOCATE & EXPAND

Get connected to our growing industry clusters that include: Brewing, Bioscience, Outdoor Products, Technology, Automotive, Aerospace, and Advanced Manufacturing.

Our tools to help your company include: linking with the local supply chain, finding talent, incentives, business finance, and more.

WHY CENTRAL OREGON?

When compared against its neighbors to the north and south, Oregon’s overall business costs rank significantly lower. Average electricity rates, natural gas rates, state & local sales tax rates, and business tax climates in particular are significantly lower than the national average.

We help you navigate the regional and local real estate market, infrastructure and permitting processes.

For a relocating business, Central Oregon has a reputation for welcoming new companies without sacrificing workforce, talent, quality healthcare, transportation, or infrastructure. EDCO’s resources and connections can help your business make the right decisions when choosing a new home.

Case Study: Riff Cold Brewed

Riff Cold Brewed was born from a mission to produce the world’s most delicious cold brewed coffee. Serial entrepreneur Paul Evers (also behind Bend staple Crux Fermentation Project), along with a crew of other Central Oregonians, started Riff in late 2017. They opened a bottling and production facility in Redmond, along with the first-of-its-kind Cold Brew Taproom in Bend.

Riff is a great example of how economic development programs are poised to help companies grow. From the beginning, they worked with Redmond Economic Development (REDI) to utilize different tax incentive programs, while connecting with other community resources to help the company position itself to grow more efficiently. In October 2019, Riff presented and won funding at the Bend Venture Confer -

(BVC), the largest angel conference in the West.

With innovation at its core, Riff has taken the craft brewing expertise to create the next great variation in energy drinks. The funding they received from BVC allowed them to further develop their latest product, Alter Ego, a natural plant-based energy drink brewed from coffee’s little-known fruity pulp, cascara, a traditionally wasted biproduct of coffee.

A driving force for our economic performance is a collaborative and inclusive entrepreneurial community. This is supported via the number of new business registrations, which has outpaced far larger cities. In 2019, AdvisorSmith ranked Bend fifth for Top Midsize Cities where Americans Start the Most Businesses at 3.79 business started per 1,000 residents.

The region is large enough to provide resources and access to capital that help new entrepreneurs get started, while still being small enough that those resources are interconnected to support businesses as they grow. Unique to Central Oregon, given its size, are the numerous community resources and assets that are available. Assets managed by EDCO include monthly Central Oregon PubTalks, the Stable of Experts (mentors) and the largest Angel Conference in the West, the Bend Venture Conference.

Small Cities For Starting A Business

Source: Wallet Hub, April 2019.

Both Redmond and Bend made Wallet Hub’s Top 10 list for best cities to start a business at #4 and #9 respectively, based on an index of criterial that included business environment rank, access to resources rank and business costs rank. They were the only two Oregon cities to make the top 75 of 1,261 small cities ranked in the index.