When husband-and-wife team Rachel and Tarek Kanaan opened their specialty beer and tea business, Unity Vibration Living Kombucha Tea LLC, in 2009, they quickly racked up debt, to the point of short-selling their house.
But it wasn’t because the Ypsilanti-based business wasn’t successful. Quite the opposite: Distributors were asking for more product, and the Kanaans were trying to build out their brewing operations and add a tasting room to keep up with demand.
They already had burned through their line of credit getting open, and they said that banks weren’t willing to offer any expansion capital.
So the pair turned to crowd investing, a form of crowdfunding that allows people to actually invest in a business rather than just giving donations the way Kickstarter and other platforms are structured. … Read more at crainsdetroit.com