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each day from not commuting, as well as Zoom technology, to advance their concept.
They are closing in on a location for their venture and plan to start brewing beer by early next year.
As for Liam Gorman, the pandemic certainly helped inspire his venture, CozQuest, which he bills as “the new way to explore the Berk- shires.” It’s a local treasure hunt, as he called it, one that connects consumers and businesses “through their love of community and adventure.”
Using their phones, players solve a puzzle, follow a map, and find and scan a QR code to win a prize from a local business. If a player finds all the prizes, he or she can win some cash. German has created a number of these hunts, in cities and attractions such as Hancock Shaker Village and MASS MoCA, and says the business has developed a loyal following among both players and sponsoring businesses. His plan is to expand the concept and perhaps take it to other markets.
These entrepreneurs and many others are part of an emerging story in the Berkshires. It’s about people finding entrepreneurial energy dur- ing the pandemic — and finding ways to harness it.
It’s No Walk in the Park
As she goes about trying to grow her venture, Miraglia says there are times when she will actually tell herself that she’s “on the Camino.”
By that, she meant she’s on an arduous journey, one where you’re just trying to get to the next day and really don’t know what’s around the next bend.
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Indeed, while her concept has drawn interest from adventure seek- ers across the country and even other countries — not to mention a signifi- cant amount of press locally — there have been countless challenges to overcome. These include everything from the weather, which has canceled many hikes, to lingering anxiety about gathering in, or even walking in, large groups, to lingering anxiety about how to generate revenue in the winter months.
“I’ve had to refund 15% of my deposits so far because of the weath- er,” said Miraglia as she referenced a spring and summer of almost inces- sant rain, adding that these seasons have been challenging enough; winter is a matter that will be decided anoth- er day.
“The overall demand
for services in the tourism
and hospitality sector
hasn’t changed a lot,
and because of that, it’s
created opportunities for
entrepreneurs to make a run
at whatever they wanted
todo.Wehaveseenalotof
”
“It’s hard,” she said, using that phrase to describe both the Camino and entrepreneurship, which has test-
ed her in every way imaginable.
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Meanwhile, Dell’Aquila, while obviously confident and enthusiastic about his venture, was quite candid about his leap from a steady pay- check to the uncertainty of entrepreneurship.
“It’s definitely terrifying,” he noted. “I vacillate from being super- excited to being super-scared.”
By all accounts, there are more people experiencing these mood swings in the Berkshires these days.
Deb Gallant, executive director of EforAll Berkshire, told Busi- nessWest that the agency, part of a larger, statewide network that also includes an office in Holyoke, staged its first accelerator program just before COVID-19 arrived in the winter of 2020; it had eight participat- ing businesses. The agency then saw a considerable uptick in applica- tions for the next few cohorts, at the height of COVID, and for all the reasons mentioned above.
“A lot of people were unemployed, especially those in hospitality,” she explained, noting that many large employers in that sector, such as Canyon Ranch, Kripalu, and others, shut down or curtailed operations. “We had a huge uptick in applications for the next two cohorts.”
The number of applications declined somewhat for the upcom-
ing fall cohort, which she attributes to improved stability at many of those businesses that had shut down partially or completely during the pandemic. But the agency will still have a large cohort, said Gallant, adding there is still a good amount of entrepreneurial activity in this region, which has been reinventing itself for the past 30 years from an economy dominated by manufacturing, and especially General Elec- tric’s massive transformer complex in Pittsfield, to one that is far more diverse and driven in many ways by tourism, hospitality, and the arts.
Jonathan Butler, executive director of 1Berkshire, a multi-faceted
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