By Ralph Brown, HVTDC Business Development Advisor

On Tuesday evening, April 12, 2016, CNBC’s “The Billion Dollar Buyer” presented the hospitality company Lindry’s Inc. Chairperson and CEO, Tilman Fertitta. Tilman operates a number of nationally known dining and entertainment brands, including Morton’s The Steakhouse and Golden Nugget Hotels & Casinos.

Tilman has tremendous buying power with an annual budget of $2 billion and is looking to use it to help American small businesses highlighted in these shows. In this episode, he spent time with Linoto, a high-end pure linen bed sheet company in Yonkers, NY, and placed a substantial order for linen sheets for one of his hotels.

The next day, HVTDC called Linoto’s CEO and Creative Director, Jason Everge, to introduce its services and set up a face-to-face meeting. Only two days later on Friday April 15, Linoto and HVTDC met at the Yonkers workroom, and within one week, an improvement project was started. HVTDC realized that once Linoto aired on TV, they could be bombarded with orders. They were. Now, HVTDC is working with them to improve workflow and optimize their small space in order to handle the influx of new orders and help them generate sustained business growth.