INCLINE VILLAGE - On shelves behind the counter at the Lindo Michoacan store, two youth soccer trophies coexist with lighters and boxes of Marlboro Reds. Above the shelves, a plaque notes that "Dios bendice este negocio" - God blesses this business. A talk show plays on Univision, and owner Rosa Villagomez sits at the register as customers stop by.
Villagomez, a U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, has operated her family-owned Mexican foods and gifts store since 1994.
"It was difficult because we truly started from nothing," Villagomez said in an interview in Spanish. "It was tough to start."
Villagomez and her then-husband received a $5,000 loan from a goods supplier in Reno, which helped their business get off the ground.
"The truth - we worked very hard. It was difficult, but we've done well," she said.
While businesses owned by Latinos whose native language isn't English find some initial difficulties in starting a business, they've found success, too.
Even though she didn't have much to start out with, Villagomez said her biggest advantage was having legal status to live and work in the U.S.
"Thanks to God, we were already legal here. It's an advantage that we don't have that problem," she said. "Many people aren't going to start a business because they don't have papers."
A few years after founding her business in Incline, Villagomez got divorced. Now, she runs the store with her husband of two years, Rafael Mondragon, and her four children, who range in age from 23 to 7-year-old Samantha, whose two soccer trophies reside in the store.
Small businesses catering to Latino customers presents a robust growth area, said Emma Sepulveda, a professor and the director of the Latino Research Center at the University of Nevada, Reno.
"It's a great opportunity. Nationally, the small businesses that are starting are mostly Latinos - actually, Latinas," Sepulveda said.
In the Village Market shopping center down the street, Luz Maria Bernal has run Nuestro Sueno Mexican Store for five years. After living in the area and working for three years as a custodian at Incline High School, she thought she saw an opportunity.
"I watched all the Mexicans going to Village Market, the Latinos," she said in Spanish. "So I asked my husband, 'why don't we put a Mexican store on that corner?'"
Then, luck began coming Bernal's way, as she was able to secure a space for the store, find goods for the store and then find success with customers.
Nuestro Sueno's success inspired Bernal to found two other businesses in the area, including a clothing store called Fashion Cute for You and a restaurant in the Village Center called La Mujarra Feliz. But neither of those businesses were able to catch on and Bernal closed both, with the restaurant closing last year because of the economic downturn.
Bernal sees her lack of solid English skills as a hindrance to further business success.
"If I knew more English, I wouldn't have this store. I would have a much bigger store, like Village Market or Raley's," she said. "In this country, English is number one - the number one necessity."
And the key to opening a successful business, Bernal said, is having legal status, because those who attempt to operate without citizenship are bound to have all their achievements taken away.
"It's a large error to have a business when you aren't a resident of this country," she said.