Small businesses throughout West Central Illinois were honored today at the Small Business Day Luncheon where a Galesburg company came away with one of the top honors.
Pegasus Manufacturing is the 2016 winner of the “Entrepreneur of the Year” award. Area business leaders gathered at the Lake Storey Pavilion to honor standout businesses and to celebrate “community.”
That’s a word keynote speaker Adam Vitale of G&M Distributors centered his speech around. Vitale says Galesburg and the businesses already in place in the town are “poised for great success.”
“The success isn’t going to come from a massive employer moving into the area,” Vitale says. “The success will not be created by some special government agency or from some special government program. Rather, the success will come from within.”
Pegasus has certainly been built from within in it’s two and a half years in town. Director of Operations Ray Whitehead says the company is experiencing a 27 percent growth rate this year. He tells WGIL the award was a surprise.
“You usually think of other people doing things like this and never yourself,” Whitehead says. “It was a shock and it’s very humbling and a great honor.”
Other award winners included Baked, as well as Alfano’s Pizzeria of Monmouth. Reiman’s Harley Davidson in Kewanee collected another major award of the day. They were given the”Entrepreneurial Lifetime Achievement” honor.
