Industry Support
Contacts:
Athletic & Outdoor: Sue Bal | Metals & Manufacturing: Kevin Johnson | Green Cities: Katherine Krajnak
Prosper Portland supports four industry sectors – Technology & Media, Green Cities, Metals & Machinery, and Athletic & Outdoor – through partnerships, initiatives, and technical assistance.
The region hosts a concentration of talent and companies in these high–growth industries. We want to ensure inclusive growth by supporting these competitive industries that provide high-quality job opportunities and working to fill those jobs with people of color and low-income residents.
Metals & Machinery
The Metals & Machinery cluster includes primary metal manufacturing, fabricated metal product manufacturing, machinery manufacturing, and transportation equipment manufacturing.
Green Cities
The Green Cities cluster is a broad category of companies producing innovative products, services, and technologies that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources.
Technology & Media
The Technology & Media cluster is one of the fastest growing clusters in Portland’s economy, employing nearly 14,000 people in Multnomah County and more than 30,000 across the region.
Athletic & Outdoor
The Athletic & Outdoor (A&O) sector includes a wide array of consumer goods businesses, including apparel, footwear, bikes, gear, handmade goods and accessories.
About Industry Support
An industry cluster is a group of geographically concentrated, interrelated firms. Companies that locate in a cluster benefit from a skilled labor force, increased innovation, coordinated advocacy efforts, high-quality supply chains, and knowledge spillover. Clusters interact in ways that establish competitive advantages through the creation and incorporation of new knowledge into products and the processes that produce them.
By focusing on clusters we can:
- Deploy limited resources in a strategic and catalytic fashion.
- Interact with groups of firms rather than conduct isolated transactions.
- Facilitate industry-led innovation and interventions.
- Foster the alignment of resources among regional and state partners.
If Black, Latinx and other people of color had the same income distribution as white people, the nation’s GDP would have been 14 percent greater in 2012 – $2.1 trillion. Fostering a more equitable Portland will attract an increasingly diverse workforce who will see the city as a place where they can succeed.
Traded sector clusters are drivers of our economy as their sales of goods outside of the region bring money into Portland.
- Support through sponsorships and partnerships
- Inclusive programming
- Diverse recruiting
- Inspiring Diversity Grant
- Business Internship Grant
- TechTown Diversity Pledge
- Access and support for trade missions
- Expansion & relocation Support
- Export assistance
- Peer–to–peer networking opportunities
- Access to grants, financial programs, and technical assistance
Related Programs
Inspiring Diversity Grant
The Inspiring Diversity Grant offers grant funding of up to $10,000 per traded-sector company to inspire creative equity-related best practices by employers around workforce, marketing and communications.
A&O Peer to Peer Program
This program designed for small and medium sized Athletic and Outdoor (A&O) product companies provides an effective learning forum.
Lean Manufacturing Program
Since 2004, Prosper Portland has collaborated with the Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership to provide lean/efficiency improvement consultations. We provide a 50% match of up to $12,500 for OMEP services to qualified companies.
Portland Enterprise Zone
Prosper Portland is the local sponsor for the Portland Enterprise Zone program, which uses five-year property tax exemptions to leverage significant private investment that spurs economic activity in the community.
